1991 Nissan Sentra SE-R Updates Page 1: Project Cars: Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

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Found on our discussion board Dec 20, 2004

Mike pulls out the clean title for this 1991 Nissan SE-R.

The interior is clean with no rips and minimal sun damage. A little detailing and it was awesome.

Being from Atlanta, the SE-R has absolutely zero salt damage. The engine compartment is very clean; this picture was before we detailed it.

We also need to fix this oil leak around the cam cover. It's a slow leak that appears to have been oozing for years, based upon the trail of oil down the block.

We flew to Atlanta, Ga., this weekend to pick up our latest project car. The 1991 Nissan Sentra SE-R was listed on our "Under $2005 Classifieds" message board for "$1500 or trade for something interesting." We thought the SE-R was interesting enough and e-mailed the seller to learn more about the car.

It turns out that the seller, Mike Karp, had owned the car for just a few months, having picked it up as a trade-in at the dealership he worked at. The SE-R had 114k miles on it, was in okay condition, but needed a clutch. The car sported a collection of door dings to rival a golf ball, but had the original paint and absolutely zero rust. We said, "Great, pick us up at the Atlanta airport on Saturday with the car."

The car was as promised, a little scruffy, but with no rust and a clean interior. The clutch slippage is only noticeable when shifting quickly from gear to gear. A short pause allows the clutch to do its job without fuss. We drove back to Florida with a grin on our face. The car was smooth, fast and quiet. It also didn't burn any oil and got us 32 mpg on the trip.

Our plan is to fix the small problems that the car has and then start modifying it for SCCA autocross fun. We're thinking STX for this little bugger, as we really want to replace the weak factory viscous limited slip differential with something more effective, like the NISMO clutch-type LSD.

One problem that we fixed right away was the driver's side door hinges. Door sag is a common problem on these Sentras and is easily fixed. We went to our local junkyard and got the passenger side hinges from a 1994 Sentra. The passenger side ones have less wear and you can use them on the driver's side. The only thing you need to do is use the lower passenger one on the upper driver's side, and vice versa. The two hinges set us back $7.

During our trip to lunch, we stopped at our local budget paint shop (the same guys that did the CMS Volvo) and got a quote of $1000 to make our Sentra "look good." That includes blocking out the dozens of dings that the car has, and fix the dent on the left rear. We'll start saving our pennies.

We then went by the local car parts emporium and picked up a set of new wiper blades, distributor cap, distributor rotor and new NGK spark plugs. We also got some new #194 bulbs to replace the burned out ones in our instrument cluster. This wild spending set us back $69.

Our co-worker, Scott Lear, offered us a used Blaupunkt CD player to replace the Sony cassette player that the car came with. Has anyone ever seen a cassette player that is XM capable? Why bother?

Happy X-mas Dec 25, 2004

With the help of SR20 Forums, we replaced the back lights in our instrument cluster. The bulbs are a 194 variant that is specific to the Nissan application, but a normal (read cheap) bulb that you can get at a local parts store will work.

The first step is to unscrew the instrument surround and the center dashboard trim, as well as the cluster itself. Once you disconnect the speedometer cable from the transmission, you can pull the cluster out enough to disconnect the other end of the speedometer cable and all of the wiring.

With the cluster out, you pull the bulb assembly, yank the bulb out of its socket and push the new bulb in, taking care to bend the new bulb's contact wires over either side of the holder. Take the blue bulb cover off of the old bulb and put it on the new one. Reassembly is pretty simple from there. We disconnected the seatbelt warning light which appeared to be hyperactive on our car, as well as the SE-R's pathetic door buzzer.

While we had the dash apart, we installed the used CD player that our Club Editor gave us. Oddly enough, the plug on the back of our Sony cassette was the identical plug used for the Blaupunkt CD. Literally, this was a plug and play operation. Now we have all of the lights in our dashboard and modern tunes.

On the performance side of things, we've ordered up a set of Team Dynamics Pro Race 1 wheels, sized 15x7 for the SE-R. These wheels are under $130 a piece and weigh in at 13.2 pounds. The plan is to run these with a 205/50ZR15 tire for street use, then bolt on a pair of 15x8 rims and 225/50ZR15 tires for autocross use on the front of the SE-R, once we see how much clearance there is.

And we've got a holiday present on the way for the SE-R, an Active Tuning rear strut reinforcement bar. For $99, it came highly recommended as a great start to a capable suspension for the classic SE-R.

What we did over the holidays Jan 5, 2005

This past weekend we replaced the valve cover gasket. The gasket kit was purchased from the Autozone for about $33 and took about an hour to install. While the valve cover was off, we cleaned it out with lacquer thinner and then repainted it. We couldn't find a silver that looked correct for the original finish, so some Rustoleum "Safety Red" was used from their Industrial line of rattle-can paints. The new gasket sealed up the leaks quite well.

We've also been surfing the net for good deals. Based upon recommendations from the SR20Forum, we purchased an intake ($43 with shipping) and a front strut tower bar ($36 with shipping) from vendors on Ebay. The word on the street is that these work fine and are a legitimate good deal. We also purchased a Luk clutch disk and pressure plate from a fellow SR20Forum member for $60. Normally retailing for $209, this clutch was installed for 1000 miles before the guy's engine had unrelated headgasket problems. Good deal for us.

We also weighed our SE-R in "autocross" trim with 1/4 tank of gas, no spare tire or tools and no floor mats

Total Weight = 2436
LF: 766 RF: 842
LR: 431 RR: 396

With our editor's fireplug frame in the driver's seat:

LF: 862 RF: 866
LR: 536 RR: 406

Here's a look at what we've spent so far.

$1500 car purchase
$252 plane ticket to pick SE-R up
$7 door hinges from junkyard
$33 valve cover gasket
$69 tune-up items, wiper blades, Haynes manual (it's good for swatting flies), light bulbs
$99 Active Tuning rear strut tie bar
$36 Ebay-sourced front strut tower bar
$43 Ebay-sourced warm-air intake
$60 Nearly new Luk clutch
$516 Team Dynamics Pro Race 1 15x7 wheels

Total Spent: $2615

We've also got some new Falken Azenis tires on the way. We think those are going to be around 70-80 bucks a piece. Great tires for the money!

Holy Bodyroll, Batman Jan 10, 2005

Bling! Those chrome beauties weigh over twenty pounds a piece.

The Pro Race 1 from Team Dynamics weighs in at 13.2 pounds.

We competed at a Martin Sports Car Club autocross this Sunday. Per finished second in STS in our essentially stock SE-R, while Kim, Per's wife, finished 6th. We were about 2 seconds behind the winner, who was driving an E46 3-series BMW on fresh Falken Azenis tires.

Our tire options were a little less than stellar, as we raided our corporate shed and came up with some three-year-old BFGs that were well aged. These tires were mounted on a set of the ugliest rims ever cast. They were, however, slightly better than the off brand tires and narrow SE-R rims that the car normally rolls on.

Our new wheels, Team Dynamics Pro Race 1 wheels showed up today, their awesome anthracite finish is a stark and attractive contrast to the ugly chrome wheels we had on the car over the weekend. We also scored a used set of 205/50ZR15 Falken Azenis tires for $100 from a local racer. These will be good tires for our initial suspension and alignment sorting.

Prep for paint Jan 18, 2005

Here's how the car looks as of today, they've spot-primered the areas where bodywork was done.

We didn't get to race this weekend, but we did prep our SE-R for its trip to the paint shop. We got an estimate of $1224 to straighten and paint our SE-R. This is the same paint shop that we recently featured in our "Fresh Paint" article.

We cleaned the SE-R with a scouring pad and degreaser to remove all traces of wax. We then marked every ding with a small piece of masking tape.

At Fact-O-Bake, the car is being prepped for paint. Small amounts of polyester filler are being used to fill in the multitude of door dings.

The dent in the rear corner has also been straightened and filled. A black car is one of the hardest for bodyshops as every little wave is highlighted by the shiny black paint.

We also received our NISMO clutch-type limited slip from Nissan Motorsports and all of the necessary seals and bearings from Greg at Mossy Nissan. We've scheduled the install of these pieces, as well as our "new" clutch for January 31st.

Meanwhile, Our office is looking like a SE-R performance store.