1998 Nissan Sentra SE-R Cup Racer

This story begins with a crash, not in a car but on a mountain bike. Racing down the side of a mountain, I quickly found that an ber bike with 8 inches of suspension travel and disc brakes doesn't make up for a general lack of skill. The resulting crash left me with a damaged shoulder and a lingering fear of riding fast.

Unable to ride my bike to get my speed fix, I decided to take up something safer-auto racing-and I wanted to get into the action quickly. I didn't want to spend a bunch of time building a car from scratch, I just wanted to get out and drive.

I purchased a 1998 Nissan Sentra SE built for NASA's USTCC Touring Car series by an underfunded team. This proved to be a huge mistake, which became painfully apparent the moment I started sorting through the Sentra's mechanicals. The front suspension was literally falling apart, and the whole unibody was collapsing because the inept cage builder had cut out major structural elements of the chassis. Plus, the car was seriously overweight and every aspect, from the wiring to the suspension, was poorly done.

The worst part, however, were the graphics. The team sponsor was a dog food company, so the car was covered with cartoon pictures of dogs, cats and horses. This resulted in the car being immediately christened the "Dog Car" by my fellow racers.

Booty or not, I was going racing. I tweaked the car just enough to jibe with the rules of the SE-R cup series, which is sanctioned by the National Auto Sport Association (NASA), and entered it in the last event of the 2002 season. To my surprise, I did reasonably well. Well enough that I figured I could win if I fixed the problems, which of course compelled me to embark on the expensive endeavor of completely rebuilding the car.

Off it went to Afterhours Automotive in Cypress, Calif., where Brian Kono pulled and straightened the buckled unibody on a frame table and my friend Andris Lavins welded in additional reinforcing tubes to the cage, patched the unibody where it had been cut away and built a triangulated strut tower brace for the front end.

With the chassis straight, I removed 120 pounds of sound insulation and unneeded parts, and simplified and fixed the hacked-up wiring harness. Then it was back to Afterhours so Brian could cut off the buckled roof, weld on a new one, shit-can the unsafe seat mounts and fabricate stronger seat and harness anchors. Brian also fabricated a carbon-fiber splitter/belly pan and modified the Stillen front end so it could be easily removed with Dzus fasteners. A beefy brace that ties the lower control arms to the engine subframe, a weak point on the Sentra chassis, the class-legal rear wing and a Polyshields scratch-resistant Lexan windshield are also the work of the Afterhours crew.

Brian also spent a lot of time with aerodynamic details, fabricating ducts into a Fiber Images carbon hood so air from the splitter would be forced through the big aluminum Koyo Racing radiator, up over the engine and out the hood vents, greatly improving cooling and downforce. Afterhours also built a ram airbox for the engines air intake and vents for the Cartune 16-row oil cooler kit using the openings in the airdam. Before handing me the bill, Afterhours smoothed the body, sprayed the exterior in deep graphite blue, finished the interior in a light gray and applied the vinyl graphics.

Then I replaced the tired SR20DE engine with a fresh JDM SR20 sporting Jim Wolf Technologies S4 cams, timing gears, Unorthodox racing underdrive pullys, Hotshot headers, cold-air intake and a JWT POP charger filter. A stainless-steel Magnaflow Magnapack muffler with 2.5-inch stainless piping dumps the exhaust under the car.

The engine was hung on Energy Suspension urethane motor mounts. Auto Meter Ultralight oil pressure and water temperature gauges with Nisport adaptors help monitor the engine. With the SE-R Cup SR rules necessitating a 16:1 power-to-weight ratio, only about 155 whp was required for a competitive package. JWT's Clark Steppler tuned the engine's cam timing and ECU for a wide powerband and area under the power curve, instead of maximum peak power.

Howard Watanabe of Technosquare in Torrance, Calif., rebuilt the weak, problematic SE-R transmission with cryotreated and shotpeened internals and welded the case for reliability. A NISMO 1.5-way limited-slip differential was added and Redline Shockproof heavy gear oil is used. A JWT aluminum flywheel and HD clutch couple the power to Driveshaft Shop heavy-duty shotpeened, heat-treated and polished axles.

A Fastbrakes four-piston, 11-inch rotor front brake kit and Stillen slotted rear rotors are grabbed by Hawk Blue brake pads. I run stock rear brakes per the SE-R Cup rulebook. Stillen braided steel brake lines move Motul RBF600 fluid pumped by an Altima master cylinder that has a larger piston bore.

The interior features a Sparco Pro-2000 seat and Sabelt harnesses. The driver interface consists of a Sparco quick-release steering wheel, Sparco pedals and a NISMO shift knob atop a B&M quick shifter. A 10-pound Firesafe halon system reduces the risk of fire.

The car's suspension is racecar sophisticated. All pivot points use Energy Polyurethane bushings. Progress Group adjustable anti-roll bars help balance the chassis and Ground Control Advance Design shocks with double externally adjustable digressive damping, high-pressure monotube construction, coil-over springs, and a short body provide a large degree of tuning flexibility. I also installed Ground Control camberplates and Shigspeed rear pillow-ball mounts, which connect the dampers to the unibody. I use Eibach ERS springs with 650 lb/in. front and 500-lb/in. rear rates and Volk TE37 forged lightweight wheels wrapped with 205/50-15 Toyo RA-1 tires. Darren Nishimura of West End Alignment corner balanced the car, bent the rear beam axle for zero-toe to help the car rotate, set the alignment at 4-degrees positive caster, 2.5-degrees negative camber and 1/8-inch toe out in the front and 1.25-degree negative camber in the rear.

After all this work, the car is still on the heavy side at 2,280 pounds, due to the patchwork cage and unibody, but it has still proven to be quite competitive. In 2003, it scored two wins and podium finishes in 12 out of 16 races. It has also proven to be dead reliable, finishing every race it started. So the once maligned Dog Car is doing well and I once again have my adrenalin fix to help keep me sane for the rest of the month. Woof. Woof.

Internal
Auto Meter Ultralight oil pressure and water temperatureguages with Nisport adaptors Sparco quick-release steering wheel, Sparco pedals, NISMO shift knob, B&M quick shifter, 10 lb. Firesafe halon system