People keep asking me, “Is XS out of business?” The short answer is no. I stopped by last week and some of the customer cars in the shop were: a 800whp Supra, a 1040whp BCNR33 GT-R, a bone stock R33 getting an OS clutch change, Lotus Elise getting a turbo and Motec, a new STi getting a 350whp upgrade, a S15 getting a Nismo 6 speed and OS twin plate clutch, and my personal BNR32 GT-R because I had them change my fan shroud (yeah I got lazy…). They doesn’t sound out of business to me. However, they are closed to the general public and only do web sales, international and domestic wholesale distribution to other shops, and serious project and race cars. They no longer accept daily appointments unless they deem the project worthwhile for them and the customer. Essentially, they will no longer be dealing with cheap asses. I think Troy made a good decision on that one. Can you still get your car worked on at XS? Yes, if you’re looking to do things right the first time and not pinch pennies. Good custom work costs money and XS has a regular customer base who want to do things right. It’s not like XS has ever over charged: they just charge by the hour just like a lawyer or doctor would. Most people think this is outrageous, but who’s paying for those extra hours making something work properly when the customer decides that he wants to use brand B parts instead of the brand A parts that XS recommended to begin with? Why would XS recommend brand A? Because THEY KNOW which parts are better. Not the desk jockey/FFF on the forum. Troy figured out how to avoid this problem: don’t take the job at all unless the customer wants to do it the XS way. To make a long story short, if you want a reliable, powerful car, and have the budget to do it right, then XS is open. If you own a yellow BNR34 GT-R (yes, I’m calling out an actual cheap ass) and you want to pay Honda prices, XS is closed. You might think that this is arrogant, but it really isn’t. Instead of wasting time answering questions like, “How much power can you make with the STI? I don’t actually have the car yet though. Or do you think I should get an EVO instead?” or “Can’t you do a little better on the price? [after spending an extra 3 hours on the dyno because the cheap ass wanted to save $100 of brand B fuel injectors]”, XS can offer better service to existing customers. It’s good to know that XS is still going strong even though I no longer work there. Although they have some cool projects at the moment so I might offer some help. Anyhow, if you have any questions, want to buy something or need some work done, you can reach XS here via email. XS will match or beat pricing on many products to just about anybody (especially on larger orders). So if you are a cheap ass, at least they’ll still sell you parts at a good price.
A perfect example of never listening is my good friend Mike Ferrara. I love him to death, but he is stubborn as fuck. He always builds or modifies his car his way until he can’t figure out why he was 100-150whp short. This has happened maybe 3 times now? Mike adds parts, finds whatever he did doesn’t work right on the dyno, XS changes things around their way, and wallah! Extra 100whp. Anyhow, I was over at XS last week and saw that they were almost done with some minor work on Mike’s R33. To date, Mike’s best 1/4 mile ET was 9.73 sec @ 145mph on full tread BFG drag radials. That was at about 940whp I think. Whenever Mike can’t figure it out, guess who he calls. Yours truly of course so with my advice and Koji’s tuning, XS got the car up to 1040whp after a “disappointing” 940whp. Oh wait, should I throw in the dumb ass forum excuses? Umm, ok here’s the required gay forum shit: “No NOS, the car had 6 month old gas, we had a boost leak, and there was an exhaust leak so once we fix those probs we’ll see how much power we can make next week. It’s the fastest GT-R with full interior, a 45° bend on the front intake tube, east of the 110 fwy!” Na, I was just clowning the gayness of forum excuses. The car hasn’t seen the track with the extra power yet so XS did a little more prep work. After telling Mike for like 5 years (seriously), he finally listened and had XS get him an Electra CF hood for the weight reduction and lower under hood temps, Peter redid the intake tubes, and Tomei hooked up the R33 headlight replacement fresh air inlet. What Mike had XS do against recommendations was to get a set of American made front axles. I can see why Mike was concerned since the car is making more power than ever and the car weighs in at 3700lbs (this car is street driven with full interior), but sure enough the axles didn’t fit right and the outer housings were .082″ too large. So Pete put back the Garage Saurus front axles.
Twin Apex Isamu RX-6 TCW77 turbos, Portflow head, XS Racemax bronze valve guides, custom Mahle pistons with 22mm pins, Carillo rods, HKS 2.8L step 2 crank, Tomei 290IN/Apex 280EX cams, Trust 4 row IC, custom XS fabricated intake and hot side IC tubes, Hypertune intake plenum, 1600cc x 6 RC/Bosch injectors, twin Apex R33 in-tank fuel pumps, and Apex Power FC D-jetro ECU. All machine work on the head and block was performed by Cosworth and tuning was performed by XS. Some of the catch tank fab was done by L-Con.
Here is the parachute mount. NHRA rules state that once you exceed 150mph in the 1/4 mile, you need to have a parachute on the car whether you pull it or not. The parachute mount was fabricated by Gary at Designcraft Fabrications. The NOS is used on the street to spool the turbos and shuts off at 14psi. The Splitfire coils are pieces of absolute shit and that’s why they’re sitting in the trunk and not on the engine. CANADIANS: stop wasting your money!
The parachute can be removed on the street so the license plate can go on for daily duty.
The Electra hood is real deal dry carbon and cooked in the autoclave. I don’t have a weight, but if feels about 6-7lbs. XS installed it with Aerocatch latches from the UK which are really slick.
There is only an outer “skeleton” and my buddy Don tells me the square in the center is a layer of honeycomb for stiffness. This hood is sick.
Real deal JDM Electra. No Extreme Dimensions or Carbon Creations bullshit here.
Gary at Designcraft built the cage out of 4130 tube like 3 or 4 years ago. The Hollinger sequential is dope; I love driving it. The removeable door bar makes life easy for ingress/egress on the street. You can also see the Tomei fresh air headlight replacement that will blast air right on to the new K&N filters. Mike doesn’t know it yet, but the goal is 1100whp and 9.30’s.