Patrick DuPuis
1991 Acura Integra RS

“If you want it done right, do it yourself.” We’ve all heard it, we all know what it means. How many of us actually live by it? It’s safe to say a majority of Honda enthusiasts get out and wrench on their own cars in some way. “It’s good for you to get out and get dirty sometimes,” my Dad used to say. “That’s how you learn how things work, by getting out and taking things apart and putting them back together.” An engineer’s mentality. Get out there and see how things work so you can figure out how to make them better.

“No tune, no life.” A tuner’s mentality. Go out and hit a dyno or a track until you’ve exhausted every idea you can come up with to gain that extra half horsepower, or shave that extra half second. Then, come up with a better idea and start all over. See the similarities? Thinking outside the box, in the name of developing the most efficient and effective setup to accomplish the goal of lowering lap times.
 

 

Patrick DuPuis is a graphic designer by trade. He’s also the marketing director for Axis Engineering, a sister company of FET Japan and a Nardi/Personal distributor. As a matter of fact, his job duties at Axis include wholesale and retail sales, shipping, and even some accounting. If you ask him to describe himself, he’ll tell you he’s just a skateboarding Canadian in his 30s who loves DA Integras. The one thing you won’t see on his resume is an engineering degree, but I can assure you Patrick is as much of an engineer as anyone. We’ve had many conversations over many Canadian beers about all things engineering; physics, vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics, structural mechanics. Patrick has an engineering mentality, inside a tuner’s brain, with fabricator’s hands and a race car driver’s reflexes. Everything he knows he learned by observation, looking over the shoulders of some of the most famous tuners and drivers in Japan.
 
 
For 3 years Patrick lived in Japan while working for Honda Motor Company. He spent the majority of that time building, tuning, and attacking every track he could in his black Integra XSi. Coming from a small track in Canada with a basically stock Canadian model 1991 Integra RS, he learned the basics of how to tune and drive an FF car on a racetrack. Watching SiRs and Type Rs shave seconds off their times while trying to tune a disadvantaged DA6 chassis proved to be a bit frustrating at times, but rewarding in the end. A goal was set: build a DA chassis to keep with and even out perform mild to moderately tuned DC2 Type Rs. Sounds simple to the common keyboard tuner, but in fact, it wasn’t.
 

 
 
There isn’t much aftermarket support for the DA chassis. Everything is for the EG6, EK4/9, DC2/5. Even the EF9 and EF8 get much more love than the DA. Differences in chassis stiffness alone steer most away from the chassis toward the more popular EG or DC chassis when building a serious race car. Patrick soon found this out, but pressed forward… armed only with a realistic goal, a chassis, and whatever his brain and his hands could provide him.
 
Fast forward a few years, and a few thousand miles. I drive up to my local fine family restaurant (Hooters) for a DA meet and see a black Integra with a huge wing and ugly black wheels. I passed it off as some local ricer and never even went over to it to look more closely. I go inside to eat and meet “Patrick the Canadian,” a quiet guy drinking a beer and wearing a bright yellow Techno Pro Spirit shirt. He was telling stories about racing at Tsukuba Circuit and talking to various Japanese race car drivers. I thought he was a nice guy, but didn’t think much else about it. I was busy hanging out with friends and talking to other people at the meet anyway. I never made the connection, black DA to happy Canadian.
 
 

Had I done so, I probably would’ve walked over to the car and noticed all of the parts designed and fabricated by Patrick himself in the name of making himself faster. NSX calipers, triangulation bar, welded in roll cage, brake cooling ducts, air temperature separation chamber, and carbon fiber front splitter are just some of the parts Patrick fabricated to work with his car. He made his own titanium muffler from scratch. Add to that some pretty rare stuff like the Hiro wing and US Racing front lip, and this car stands out despite its black on black appearance. Honda Access side skirts and (at the time) Accord rear lips were things that most would overlook, but stand out to those who know.
 

 
Patrick admits that despite this being a pretty serious race car, he still wants to maintain a nice look if possible. This means keeping the paint fairly clean and not chopping up body panels unnecessarily… but the second any kind of significant improvement can be made at the expense of looks or appearance, Patrick will be the first one out there with a blow torch and welder. Push fashion as far as you can, but in the end function always wins.
 
 
 

Once Patrick found out I was an engineer, he immediately came to me to bounce what seemed like a few million ideas off of me. Patrick isn’t a trained or educated engineer, but I can say that I’ve learned a whole lot from the conversations we’ve had. He’s had ideas that I’d never expect anyone to come up with; knowledge of structural mechanics and vehicle dynamics from experience only that rivaled some very educated engineers’. Patrick watches, learns, and applies. A true engineer, educated or not.
 
I’m going to leave this feature open ended, because the car in its current state is. We are currently mid-development on a rear lower diffuser which will inevitably lead to a redesign of the front aerodynamic tuning, not to mention a complete re-evaluation of the suspension setup with the differences in cornering balance taken into account. Tires are set to be upgraded from A032-R to A048-R, which should improve lateral Gs and once again, require a re-evaluation of suspension setup. The engine is currently up for a rebuild and should be pushing 200+ whp shortly as well, which is what spawned all of these new ideas for planting the car in cornering so that the newly found power can be used to carry as much momentum through the apexes as possible. A 30+ whp jump from an essentially stock B18C is a significant increase, and in the end the cornering balance is what governs how good a setup really is. A 4.785 final drive has also been discussed over the past year or so as well, so we’ll see how far we can get in the near future before time and Patrick’s bank account runs out.

Patrick DuPuis
tnd2gen@yahoo.com