“Applying his considerable experience as well as tapping into industry contacts developed along the way, Vince Harjono has transformed the often overlooked Honda Del Sol S into a super clean street-driven two-seater equally capable of taking home trophies from local car shows, laying a beating on muscle cars at the drag strip, or getting the party started with its high quality collection of I.C.E.”
For those of us truly immersed in the tuner scene, the lure of building a new project car is always there, lurking just beneath the surface of our day-to-day lives, no matter how nice our current project car might be. For people with no interest in automobiles or modifying them, taking a perfectly good transportation device and turning it into a gutted land missile or rolling boom box probably seems about as rational as Courtney Love before her third Margarita. But for true enthusiasts for whom modifying cars has become an integral part of their lives, the joy is in building, customizing, and personalizing the machines that inspire us most. For some the dream is to build a 9-second Supra, for others it’s to build a trophy winning Impreza showstopper like this month’s cover car or a time attack widebody EVO8 like Buschur Racing’s beast seen in this month’s Redline coverage. But regardless of the dream it’s the process of conceiving a project and seeing it come to fruition that nourishes our souls and makes all the hard work, sacrifice, and dedication worthwhile.
Vince Harjono is definitely a real enthusiast, having built no fewer than three Hondas before acquiring the 1993 Del Sol S you see before you. Applying his considerable experience as well as tapping into industry contacts developed along the way, Harjono has transformed the often overlooked Del Sol into a super clean street-driven two-seater equally capable of taking home trophies from local car shows, laying a beating on muscle cars at the drag strip, or getting the party started with its high quality collection of I.C.E.
Having been a Honda guy from day one, Harjono’s love affair with modifying his rides began with a EK Civic hatch he bought in 2000 as soon as he got his driver’s license, a car he quickly sold to build a more affordable EG hatch which he later got too good an offer on to refuse. After that he built a 4-door DB8 Integra, but as fate would have it this Del Sol fell in his lap just as his interest in the Integra was waning since he’d completed a full JDM conversion on it and was looking for a new challenge. Having inherited the Sol from a friend, it sat in Harjono’s garage for a month before he tore it apart, did the suspension, lip kit, rims, and audio, but was still rockin’ the stock D15 engine.
Satisfied at first, like so many enthusiasts before him it wasn’t long before he needed more to satisfy his tuner soul. The D15 was pulled in favor of a JDM GS-R swap, but just a few short months later even the mighty B18C wasn’t cutting it. Having been smoked by a friend with a K20 in an EK coupe (who had two passengers onboard!), Harjono knew that his little targa top two-seater needed some serious iVTEC 2-liter lovin’ under the hood if he wanted to be on the leading edge of the Honda scene.
Acquiring a complete K20A2 swap, Harjono spent the next two months thoroughly revamping his fourth Honda project car, and in the process nurturing his soul by building his “end all and be all” machine. The engine bay redo started with the usual prep required for a K20 transplant, including removing the passenger side engine mounting points so that the HAsport mount kit could be bolted in place. With the K20 hanging in its new home, a Hybrid Racing K-series conversion harness was used to tackle the otherwise daunting task of getting the latest generation of Honda 4-cylinder high output engines to communicate with an OBD-1 chassis like Del Sol’s. Using all new OE connectors, the Hybrid harness interfaces perfectly with the factory dash harness and K20 engine harness while maintaining full functionality of the EG gauge cluster. Taking his wiring job to the next level, Harjono tucked as much of the wiring as possible including relocating the battery and fuse box and slickly installing an Ignited kill switch in their place, giving his Del Sol’s engine bay a totally uncluttered ‘hot rod’ look.
If you think all it takes to do a K-series swap is a custom mount kit and wiring harness, guess again. Among the many non-standard parts required for ownership of a living and breathing K20 in an EG chassis is a Suja 1 braided stainless clutch line. This seemingly simple item is necessitated, like so many other parts needed for a K swap, by the fact that the K-Unit flips the transmission to the driver’s side of the engine bay. Other hurdles to clear include how to deal with the fuel return system not normally used on a K-powered car like an RSX or TSX, an issue Harjono dealt with simply by ordering up a Golden Eagle fuel rail, Hybrid Racing braided stainless fuel lines, and a AEM fuel pressure regulator that accommodates the Sol’s return system.
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