Different. For some reason everyone wants to be different. If you're Ricky, you buy Clippers season tickets instead of Lakers; if you're Jonny, you rock a pink DS Lite (I didn't have a choice, dammit! - JW) and if you're Nads or Shrek, you proudly wear your manboobs instead of trying to hide them under a bro. The same goes for cars, it's like every time someone builds one it's gotta be different. Back in the day, for 240 owners different meant rollin' with a turbocharged KA. Then that wasn't cool anymore (oh wait, it actually never was) and the SR turned into the next hot thing. Then things got a whole lot crazier with shops stuffing RB26s into the Silvia chassis. Apparently, the next cool has arrived: Put the KY down and put your hands together for Tech2 Motorsports' JZ-swapped 240SX. Not Jay Z, but JZ as in Toyota Supra; as in the only engine that's truly capable of giving the RB26 a little Spanky McSpank head-to-head.
According to Tech2's own Andrew Monterrubio (Spanish for mount blonde), this particular S13 has more than 1,000 hours behind its development, which is about three hours more than the time Shrek's spent on punyu.com. So what has Tech2 made in just over 41 days? A road-racing, drifting, dragging, all-around racecar that pushes more horses than three Civic Si's combined. But this S13 didn't start off as a 700hp JZ-powered monster. It's beginnings were quite humble and not particularly extraordinary. Rewind to the 240's origin.
At the time, Andrew had a sweet supercharged S2000 used primarily as a show piece. Andrew's original intention was to build an S13 hatch with a healthy SR20DET beneath the hood to get around town (read: daily driver) so that he wouldn't have to drive the Honda. Like Carter's short-lived dream of starring along side Ron Jeremy, Andrew's time with the SR-powered S13 was fleeting. He loved the snap-happy chassis but definitely needed more power. Tech2's solution to Andrew's problem was simple in theory: pull out the SR and punch it up a bit. But here's the catch, Andrew, of course, wanted to be different. KA24DET? Naw, those suck. RB26DETT? Already too many of them. Then what?
Andrew didn't have to look very far to find a new powerplant, "I've always wanted a Supra Turbo but it's too much money for just a stock Supra. I loved how the S13 would go sideways easily, unlike my S2000 which would just spin. That is when I had the idea to install a Supra motor into a S13. I had seen RB26s installed in S13s at HIN. I figured if you can fit a RB than you can fit a 2JZ. I sold my SR20DET motor set and purchased a 2JZ auto clip from an Aristo."
And that was that, Tech2 began working on what quickly became the shop's flagship project. All the R&D was done in-house at Tech2 by Andrew and his close friend and fabricator, Bill VanTichelt. Monterrubio acknowledges the serious amount of work that would eventually lead Tech2 into creating its own JZ swap kit. "Without [Bill's] fabrication experience and knowledge this project would have never happened." It's true, if you like what you've read so far, you can actually drop a JZ into your own hoopty, if you've got $8,000 (that includes the engine, tranny, parts and labor, you big dummy). Andrew and Bill were even able to make the kit entirely free of fabrication so the Toyota mill and tranny drop right in.
Toyota's famed six is nearly bulletproof from the factory and good to go in stock trim, but Tech2 is obviously about being different, that is, if different is defined as power glutton. A Turbonetics T64 ball-bearing turbocharger means good things happen to those who boost. Add a Turbonetics wastegate, Spearco intercooler, HKS fuel rail and cam gears, custom intake manifold, Q45 throttle body, RC Engineering 750cc injectors, -8 braided fuel lines and fittings, Venom fuel pressure regulator and Aeromotive 1000 fuel pump. Let Henry Chung of Motorsports Dynamics tune it all using a PLX R500 wideband and we've got an S13 that really thinks it's a 640whp Supra. All that ridiculous power is transferred through a Centerforce DFX six-puck clutch to a five-speed 1JZ tranny which, according to Andrew, "is the strongest trans you can get except for the Getrag six-speed. Since the six-speed sells for almost $3k used, I went with a R154 out of the 1JZ which can handle 600 to 700hp with ease." Um, yeah, we'd stick with the stout $500 tranny, too.