Dan began pounding the pavement of the Okinawa street scene during his off-time, meeting other gearheads in the random Lawson's or Family Mart parking lot and battling up the 58 freeway between Naha and Nago City, or along a certain desolated stretch of roadway running adjacent to Kadena AFB. It was on one of these excursions that he caught up with "FC Chris" and a crew of dedicated rotorheads based in Sunabe, blew up his motor pushing it a little too hard, and learned his third lesson in RX-7 building: for best results, start from scratch.
Chris's crew was some of the fastest drag racers on the island. His personal 13B-powered FC RX-7 pushed over 500 whp at the time, and routinely sniped built GT-Rs at HKS Drag Series events at Nago Circuit, until it became too fast for its own good; "If he stayed on the throttle all the way to the traps," laughs Dan, "he'd overshoot the braking distance, and have to dodge trees at the end of the track." The crew took their fight to the streets, and hanging with them taught Dan the proper ways to build a street-driven race machine.
Dan and the crew pulled the FD's 13B, rebuilt it with street-ported housings, machined rotors and 2mm apex seals, and ditched its stock twin-turbo setup for a custom tubular exhaust manifold and Turbonetics 62-1 single turbocharger. Fuel delivery was beefed up accordingly: Bosch 550- and 1,680cc injectors and two Walbro 255s, with an A'pexi Power FC and AVC controlling it all. A tweaked Greddy front-mount intercooler kit, a Racing Design three-core radiator and some bits to help them perform optimally were added in the cooling department, and the new hardware was tuned for high-octane pump gas. Sure, more radical builds have been performed, but who can argue with 442 whp and street reliability?
Like the rest of his build, when it came to drivetrain modifications, Dan just installed what was cheap and easy to find, living in Okinawa. Which, in this case, was an OS Giken twin-plate clutch and flywheel, Kaaz two-way LSD, RE Amemiya 4.7:1 final drive, and a few other bushings and braces for which the rest of us would pay gladly pay three times the Okinawa street price . . . if we could even find them in the first place. Feeling envious, yet?
Suspension mods are simple and effective-RS-R coilovers and Mazdaspeed strut and sway bars-but the rest of the underpinnings didn't come as easily. When Dan dropped his ultra-rare RS-R rollers off at a paint shop for some fresh powdercoating, he wasn't aware they'd be donated to charity. "I saw security footage from the night I dropped them off, and you can see someone 'break in', go directly over to my wheels, take only them, and leave," Dan explains, "And one of the shop's new-hires quit the next day." Dan needed something to fill the sprawling void of the FD's flared wheel wells, but was also hell-bent on keeping styling clean, sleek and unique. A set of Uras NS-01s, 17x9, +30mm offset in the front and 17x10, +15mm offset in the rear, with Project Kics spacers matching the increased fender width, were a perfect fit.
Since Dan's car was one of the earlier models, it came cursed with a tan, 2+2 interior design, featuring ridiculously under-sized rear seats-pretty much a lose-lose all around, made worse by a set of Amori gauges the car's previous owner saw fit to haphazardly screw into the dash. Dan swapped the interior with a black set from a newer two-seat car, and added a Cusco six-point cage, Momo steering wheel, Mazda-edition Recaro carbon/Kevlar buckets, Crow safety harnesses, Knight Sports 300km/h speedo, a grip of Defi Link Meters, a Pioneer in-dash headunit and Carrozzeria speakers-a lot of which was found in scrap yards or on the plentiful JDM used parts market. "Japan is awesome like that," Dan says.
Dan's ride was complete for only a few months before Murphy handed down his infamous Law: Dan received orders to re-locate back to the states, and Uncle Sam would not be footing the bill to send his car with him. "I had to disassemble everything and have it shipped to me after I relocated." It was a $6K headache, and one that still didn't include street legality. "My old man came through for me on that," he explains. "He's an old-school hotrodder at heart, and took advantage of every custom- and kit-car law he found to get it done." Within a month, the car was registered, insured and street legal; the only stipulation being that it would carry a "collectible" designation on all paperwork for the rest of its days. We wouldn't call it anything else.