A Scion FR-S Built For One Thing
The Father/Son Drag Race Team

I first met Paul Mortensen, the dad in this father/son drag racing tale, when he was trailering the FR-S you see here from Texas to California for a big meet. I happened to have my dyno at Airaid available that day, so he stopped through Arizona to get an in-person dyno tune from Bill Knose of Delicious Tuning.

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Paul’s son, Justin, was back home studying for school and no doubt dreaming of ripping down the track in his FR-S, which at the time was vying for the title of fastest naturally aspirated ZN6 in the world. I’m sure it was pure torture for him to be doing homework while his dad was in Arizona tuning his car on the dyno.

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The Scion was surprisingly quick without forced induction, running a best ET of 13.47 on the stock block. What ensued was a battle with a Puerto Rican team called Fiebruz Motorsports, who eventually took the title from the Mortensen boys with a 13.32-second ET pass. Paul let me take the car for a spin when it was in NA trim, and I was blown away by how quick it felt!

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Fast forward a few months and I crossed paths again with the Mortensens, only this time in California. The midday lighting conditions were less than ideal, but I really wanted to document Justin’s drag race-only FR-S while we were in the same zip code.

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The plan was to break into the 12s with the naturally aspirated engine, but Paul and Justin soon grew bored competing for the fastest NA title, and the horsepower bug bit just as predictably as you would think. Next came talk of a turbo kit, forged internals and a closed-deck block.

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When I met Justin and Paul in sunny SoCal, they had just finished up the turbo motor build and were on their way to prove the car out on-track at Subiefest. Based on how well the car ran NA, I just had to see what they had done once the decision was made to go forced induction.

Going Boosted
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I knew Justin and Paul would go all-out with their turbo build. They had Outfront Motorsports build the closed-deck 4U-GSE (FA20), installing CP-Carrillo pistons with Pauter I-beam rods. They used WPC surface treatment on all the major friction components and installed 1/2-inch studs to keep the heads from flexing under 32 pounds of boost.

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Spencer Fabrication handled the installation and plumbing for the Precision Turbo Gen 2 6266 T4 twin-scroll turbocharger, which breathes through a PPE exhaust that’s 3-inch in diameter all the way through.

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As you can see, Mark Spencer performed some beautiful fab on the turbo kit, finishing everything off with a ceramic coating.

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The ZN6 front bumper has always been asking to have its grille removed; it just makes the perfect home for an intercooler. This one is an 18×4.5-inch core from Garrett, with custom end tanks also built by Spencer.

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An AMS 2000 boost controller was mounted to the center console for easy access. Justin’s FR-S still sports the full interior and everything works just like factory. Clues like the boost controller and Spencer Fab roll-cage let you know this car is much more than a normal Scion though.

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Popping the trunk, you’ll find a beautifully machined and plumbed Radium fuel setup. The surge tank is fed by one Walbro 485lph fuel pump and there are two more Walbros pumping fuel from the Fuel Safe cell to Radium fuel rails with DeatschWerks 1500cc injectors. The CO2 tank is used by the boost controller to hold the wastegates closed until a specified psi is reached, enabling Justin to run 35psi of boost on 7psi springs.

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Delicious Tuning has tuned this car from its NA days through the development of the turbo setup. Here Justin shows off the new Bluetooth capability that’s built into the Delicious Flex Fuel tune.

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Back in Arizona, Paul showed me videos on his phone of the car launching. Justin revs it to 8000rpm and then simply dumps the clutch. I was shocked at how drama-free the whole ordeal was, especially given the car runs a factory gearbox, driveshaft and diff. So I asked about the suspension; it must be something super trick, right?

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Nope, Paul told me that the FR-S chassis is just so well sorted that all they’ve done is install a set of D2 coilovers, some Whiteline bushings and billet Voodoo13 rear control arms to gain more adjustability on the alignment rack.

Sticky Tires
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Of course, the most obvious feature that lets you know this car is suited for drag racing are the ultra light three-piece wheels and drag-specific tires. The skinnies up front are mounted to little 15-inch Bogart Racing wheels that weigh only 10lbs, while the rear wheels weigh 11.5lbs and hold a 10-inch wide slick.

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Running slicks adds yet another element the Mortensens can fine tune to get the car down the strip. You can tell these guys have drag racing in their blood, and you can bet they know how to set up a car.

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As Justin pulled the car around to load it back into the trailer his foot must have slipped, because all of a sudden the Hoosier slicks were spinning!

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We got the car loaded up and said our farewells. It was great to spend a couple hours with this father/son drag race duo; two guys who looked at a Scion FR-S and saw the potential to go fast down the quarter mile instead of a road course.

So with all the new work done to turbocharge the car, what’s their new goal? Justin and Paul have their sights set on a 9-second pass, which should come once they finish setting up and tuning the car.

Keith Charvonia
Instagram: SpeedhuntersKeith
keith@speedhunters.com

Cutting Room Floor
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1

Interesting to finally see these things being built for drag racing. I always thought they would be a good base but I guess it never really popped up in anyone else's head.

2

Speedhunters, do you think you could sometime come here to Puerto Rico and check out the huge drag racing scene?

3
oldworldgoods

LuisAngelPR Honestly Speedhunters this guy ain't lying. With http://puertorico.craigslist.org/search/cta?lang=en&cc=us as my witness, Puerto Rico has quite the car scene.

4
JustinMortensen

The whole car was a team effort between sponsors and my father and I. Some sick custom work was done to the car but the cool thing is a majority of the build was done In my garage with a couple of jacks and jack stands lol.

5

JustinMortensen Great car, I like. I can always respect a garage built car. Why the factory drivetrain? Just gonna replace stuff as it breaks?

6

Tertil JustinMortensen why not run it until it breaks? why waste money if you don't have to yet...

7
JustinMortensen

Yeah we haven't had any issues yet but we are just waiting for the tranny to blow lol it has 35,000 miles on it lol but we have spares on the side so no big deal lol. The diff is actually quite strong haven't had any issues out of it yet but there are more plans in the works to make the driveline more stable under power lol. And thank you very much!

8
JustinMortensen

That's the plan lol have to keep money in the pockets to continue the build some how lol. But there are plans to beef up driveline in the future.

9
JustinMortensen

@Tertil yes truly garage built and shop assisted lol!!!!! Many hours laying on the ground but I have to give the shops that did work on it credit and my upmost respect without them some of this build would have never been possible and y'all wouldn't be seeing it on here today.

10
RichieTipsyKariuki

Hey what were the specs on this thing when it was still NA?

11

Wow! It even has stock gearbox!

12

Cool. I was doing this 2 years ago though

13

Quite a OEM diff and 'box if it can handle 700+ WHP...

14
JustinMortensen

Here is the dyno numbers for the n/a set up.

15
JustinMortensen

Well the box technically can't handle the numbers we are putting down but I do have spares laying around so I don't mind if I blow one lol the diff on the other hand has showed no signs of giving up lol.

16

I assume this will get rid of that 4k torque dip?

17

LuisAngelPR Yes, they should come!

Fiebruz Motorsports from Puerto Rico, currently have the titlte of the world fastest 86 (with the FA20 engine) in the world. Here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgvYMRAwCBg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWEzKDXeqL8


Also, these guys were the Justin's competition for the N/A Tiltle & still hold it with the other shop car:

here is the video also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq1yq9n9V9I


Now the car n/a car is a fully track car & the other one is in process for a big build.

More info of these guys is in:

http://www.facebook.com/fiebruz

18
Abdiel Rivera

JustinMortensen, congratulations on the feature. You are a formidable competitor, persistent and true to the frs platform. Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Good luck, you might just be the one that wakes us from our sleep!
Abdie Rivera
Fiebruz Motorsports

19
JustinMortensen

I hope so lol and thank you very much it's definitely been fun trying to keep up with you guys at Fiebruz but y'all are a class of your own extreamly talented group of builders and great competition as well. Look forward to seeing more from you guys in the future. In the mean time I'm going to try and find a way to keep up with yalls turbo car with that sweet sequential tranny lol.

20
DjLiquidSteele

How in the world are you guys pushing that much boost at stock compression??? It blows my mind.

21

Would love a small video clip to hear it :(

22
JustinMortensen

In the next month or so I should have clips posted to my Facebook page for the car which is FT86PROJECT9S same for Instagram. I have done a few changes on the car and just waiting for a retune, But if you want to see a clip of it when it was n/a you just have to look up 13.47 frs and it should pop up. We aren't real high tech when it comes to Recording just a cellphone or a small camcorder gets the job done for now.

23

the mechanic in me just cringed when I saw the placement of the turbo, changing belts must be fun

24

Sick build!Mind if I ask how you are running that much horsepower with the stock transmission? I am running a forged bottom end but haven't taken it further than 300whp because I'm afraid of breaking the transmission. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

25
JustinMortensen

@Abdulb well there isn't really any secret. On my turbo build I just shift a little slower but I have spares so I'm not afraid of blowing any of them up lol. The only one I want to keep is my factory one it's been a champ lol has a few hundred n/a passes on it flat foot shifting and a ha full of boosted passes and she is still holding up lol but just take it easy on the way you shift and it should hopefully be good.
Granny shift and roll the power in don't shock it.

26

Don't shock it?! It says in the article that you launched it at 8k!

27
JustinMortensen

Yes when I was n/a in the video we showed Keith now I only launch at 6500 but I don't side step the clutch anymore kind of a controlled slide.

28

haha pretty much stock looking except wheels and intercooler, yet its 700+ hp?! The stock exhaust really does it for me too, I started laughing once I saw the picture. I feel like most people arent on the same wavelength as me when it comes to how I would build a car, but this is exactly the kind of thing I would do if I was doing the whole "modern sports-car drag car" type deal. And I'm glad to hear it was a father-son thing too. This build really just ticks all the boxes for me.

29
JustinMortensen

Yea we wanted to keep a relatively stock look so we went with 3in exhaust build that resembles the factory with a little bigger tips lol.

30

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