The A80 Toyota Supra has been adored by motor enthusiasts for the level of customization it provides. It easily endured the huge turbos and superchargers people added to their Supra’s. The A80 Supra’s production finally stopped in April 2002.
Until recently, Toyota launched the new model for the Supra after almost two decades. Motor enthusiasts were excited about this new Supra release. However, due to the fact that it shares the exact same chassis, engine, and interior as the BMW Z4, people were disappointed. It received much hate for its relatively underpowered engine as compared to its past rivals, such as the Nissan GTR. It felt as if Toyota didn’t put much effort into designing it, which it rather deserved.
But Stephen Papadakis, a racing team owner, had plans to modify his brand new 2020 Toyota Supra. He had planned to turbocharge his Supra to a 1000 bhp mark and break the stereotype about this B58 i-6 engine.
He had planned to attach a large turbocharger to his Supra, specifically the BorgWarner EFR 9280 Turbo, which was capable of delivering 110 lb/min of peak flow rate at about 117k rpm when spooled to the limit.
Attaching such a powerful turbo to this engine needed verification that most of the engine parts would be able to deliver such a huge amount of power. So he took his brand new Supra and totally dismantled its engine to its bare bones. Observing the multiple components, many of them were capable of handling such a huge amount of power.
Some major parts also needed to be swapped out, so he went with forging new pistons and rods for this purpose. He also needed to redesign the intake manifold to support the air intercooler he intended to use. It was also needed to support the direct fuel injection right into the intake manifold, which the stock system lacked. So they ended up laser sintering the intake manifold into pieces and welded them together.
Many of the stock parts, such as the crankshaft, head gasket, piston rings, camshaft, rod, and main bearings, seemed to be able to handle the new power limit, he intended to set. This reflects the factor of safety that Toyota & BMW take into account while designing their engines.
So after repacking the engine, it was time for Dyno to test it, along with the new turbo. They had to make their own adapter for attaching this engine to the dyno due to how new the engine was. He started boosting it from 10 psi and checked for any trouble in the engine after each run. Then, after multiple trials of pushing this engine, he gave it some final touches to fix the minor flaws that appeared in these runs.
1000HP Toyota Supra Photo Gallery
Then, at about 42 psi of boost, it managed to hit the 1009 hp mark. It was a great accomplishment for Papadakis. And now his final goal was to prepare the rest of the car to handle this 1000 hp engine. He had to upgrade most of the components in the car, such as the transmission, wiring, ECU, chassis, brakes, etc. This shows that the new Supra’s engine still carries its name by supporting such a huge mod.
Corona hasn’t helped some of us buy our favorite vehicles of the year. Thanks for a brilliant piece.
So much information. I would love to see more