This project will appear to be underwhelming. It will be slow, not filled with much content, be drawn out for many years, and might include missing goals and not meeting expectations.
That being said, this project could not be more important to me! I've been a long time Nissan guy. It began in 2003 when I bought my first car, a 1991 240sx. I spent many years modifying all sorts of Nissans from the 80's and 90's. I turned wrenches professionally for 10 years, mostly with Nissan, and became a Nissan Master and ASE Master Tech. In 2017 I completed a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering that took 7 years of night school. In that time I've grown a family and sold off all my fun car toys in pursuit of more important things.
This project marks the end of making those tough sacrifices. Sure family will still always take time and financial priority, but I no longer have to put the car hobby on hold. I finally have the garage space, the extra parking, all my tools at home, a tow vehicle, a reliable daily driver, and sometimes I have some extra time and money to throw at a car. If there's no money or time, the car will sit and not hurt anything. What may seem impossibly low budget, and little to no time to invest, means that I have hope of hitting the track in my own car someday.
My interest in cars is pretty broad, but mostly centered around Japanese imports. I love turbos, drag racing, time attack, autocross, road racing and rally. I've only participated in drag and autox up until 2016 when I got to turn my first wheel in anger, wheel-to-wheel in a chumpcar race at PIR.
We returned in 2017 with Lucky Dog Racing League in the same car/same team and managed a 1st place in B-class, 4th overall in an 80 car field for the 7 hour enduro. We claimed 2nd place the next day in an 8 hour.
So I had to choose the motorsport I wanted to compete in. After this recent racing experience, the choice became clear. I decided that cheap endurance racing was the best value, and I like road racing more than anything anyway. Will have to sacrifice big HP and big turbos, but that's OK!
After graduating in spring it was time to buy a car. This is not going to be a dream car, or the best car or maybe not even a good car! But that's not important to me. I want a car that gets me to the track. If I've learned anything from years of modifying cars, its that you can modify cars to death and they never get any closer to the track. So making sure whatever i'm doing to the car, is done to get to the track asap is priority #1. It also had to be a Nissan, and a 4 cylinder was preferred to keep consumable costs low. 240sx was top choice, but is prohibitively expensive due to heavy drift taxes. All signs were pointing towards one of the many 4 cyl fwd Nissans. I would have purchased any B13, B14, B15 or P10, that was a good deal and could get me to my goal quickest. These cars were all reasonable candidates for caging and hitting the track.
I checked out a $600 b13 SE-R shell that was rusty, in horrible condition, and needed an absolute ton of crap before even thinking about making it a racecar. PASS
Next was a $400 1995 200sx with a GA16de. Nothing wrong with this one other than being garden-hose green and 1.6 powered. I'm sorry, this car would need a swap before being up to speed. PASS
Next was a $600 5-speed, 1993.5 G20. This checked all the boxes. Unfortunately the p10 was the heaviest and slowest of the fwd sr20de powered cars. However, It has a special place in my heart because A) I think they look cool B) they have a racing history C) Excellent suspension, sufficient brakes, long wheelbase might make this car good in the rain D) They have a fuel tank that will go 2 hours. This last item is pretty significant. In order to be competitive in the even hour races, your car should go the maximum stint length in order to minimize pit stops. Otherwise you take 1 more stop than other cars, which is a 5 minute minimum. We lost our 8 hour enduro by 50 seconds in the miata because we had to take a 4th stop in the last 30 minutes of the race. A fuel cell is expensive, so this big tank is a huge asset. There was enough good in this car that it had to come home with me.
I only drove the car a couple miles on the test drive. The guy had just "put in a new alternator" in the car, and the battery light was on. I didn't want to drive it very far, because I didn't want the battery to die and get stuck. There was a concerning engine rattle in the car, but I figured that there was enough there to justify the sales price anyway even if the engine was bad.
I got it home and put it on jack stands to give it a good look. This is the SR20de which has seen some success in chumpcar, although never in this chassis. Compression test was good, a quick look under the valve cover showed a significant amount of sludge. This was troubling because the engine is not known for developing sludge. My own personal SR20's have gone beyond 250,000 miles without any serious engine problems. I found that the battery light was due to a broken alternator connector.
I put the car back together and temporarily stuck the broken connector back in the alternator so it would make a connection, this will have to be fixed with a new connector in the future. I then tried to drive the car to the closest scale (20 minutes away) to get a starting weight. The rattle turned louder, and louder, and louder... It became clear that there was rod knock after I'd turned around to head home. By the time I rolled into the driveway it was very bad. Time to take the car apart. I really wish I'd have gotten more use out of the thing before having to tear into the engine, but oh well. Dropped the oil pan...
Spun rod bearing indeed. In fact, all the bearings looked absolutely horrible. This was the only journal with damage, but all the rods and mains, were in bad shape. It appears that this thing never had oil changes. Pretty sad, lots of oiled surfaces show wear that really never happens on a well cared for SR20 regardless of the mileage. Upon disassembly, more damage was found...
Just take a look at that grooved cam lobe!! To me that looks like the cam has lost a full millimeter of lift. That right there should cause a considerable drop in power. The rockers are also grooved, if you look closely the orifices in the cam oiling tubes are clogged with sludge. At this point I fell into a deep hole of depression that lasted about a week. The machine work to fix these parts and replace others would be more than the cost of buying a good condition long block... I didn't have the money for either option. The list of bad parts was: Crankshaft, 1 rod, intake camshaft, 3 rockers, cam oiling tubes.
In order to keep these posts a reasonable length I'm going to split them up a bit. Stay tuned!!
This last one looks great but I won't be doing it. I believe that Keith O'Dor actually died in that car in the mid 90's. 
