I bought this car in March of 2021 and have been wanting to do another build thread, but I kept putting it off. So there's going to be a handful of posts just catching up.
Chapter 1 - My friend made me buy a rally car
Like anyone who grew up playing Colin McRae's rally games, I thought rally was awesome but most likely an unobtainable goal. By total happenstance, DC region's SCCA RallyCross program moved to my hometown at the same time I moved back home. I bought a Volvo 240, prepped it and had an awesome time. I did a build thread for it, too. I still thought doing stage rally was far fetched, but I did get a truck I could tow with, a trailer, and acquired a ton of tools. A Volvo stage car popped up for sale near me around 2017. I went and looked at it, drove it, and ended up passing on it but made a friend. I ended up crewing for him, then tried co-driving. I kept shopping the whole time, but my budget was more in the "this car has potential" bracket than "go racing tomorrow". I missed out on a few stellar deals, including a free logbooked Ford Econobox. One day my buddy sent me this ad for a 92 Sentra SE-R with the comment "I already told him you'd take it".
I'll be honest, I didn't know B13 stuff at all so none of that meant much to me, but the car checked all my boxes. I messaged the seller, made a plan, and drove 3.5 hours to pick it up that weekend. We didn't even try to start it and had to wrestle the exhaust that was hanging off of it, but I loaded it and a truckload of parts up and brought it home.
I drained the tank, replaced the fuel pump, put a new fuel filter in and replaced the oil. It fired up and drove off the trailer. Here's a video of the first time it ran - excuse the fat breathing:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/a2WjFk7xXKubKMENA
The first thing I did was bolt the exhaust back up. The list of things it needed was pretty big. The wiring needed a lot of attention, the seat mounts were made for a bottom mount seat and needed redone, it didn't have gauges at all, and was missing some body parts. That said, the previous owner did a lot of really nice work on the cage and chassis reinforcement, as well as running nice fuel and brake lines and cleaning up the engine bay. It already had JVAB suspension, a trans with a 4.4 final drive, and a massive amount of extra parts. It needed a lot of love, but the bones were there. Check out that throttle pedal (affectionately referred to as a throttle bar now):
A few months passed and I didn't work on the car at all. DC region announced that they were going to do an SCCA RallySprint, and I thought it would be a perfect first event for the car.
I got my hands on a rear bumper, spoiler, and some other body parts and gave it a quick Rustoleum touch up:
After working on just enough wiring to make it start and run consistently, I got to work on the seat mounts. It's easy to take for granted the effort that goes into getting seat mounts correct. I wanted the seat as close to the main hoop as possible, as low as possible, and to be pretty in line with the steering wheel because it drives me nuts when the wheel is offset (looking at you, BMW). All this stuff while making sure the belt angles are correct and in a place you can get to. The B13 isn't a big car, so it took a good bit of test fitting and trying. Eventually I came up with a plan. I had to move one of the tubes that goes from the rocker to the tunnel, but it worked out well. I should add that most of this effort was to keep my helmet away from the roof bars - not only for safety, but because I've been in other cars where there isn't much clearance and hitting your head on cage padding is super annoying.
This is what I started with ^
This is where I wanted it ^
This is what I came up with ^
With the seat and belts mounted I could finally drive my car, so I went to a gravel road behind my house to check it out. The fun was short lived. The first decent hit on the skid plate bent the oil pan. Forewarning - this is going to be a common theme.
It still had oil pressure and wasn't leaking, so I just replaced it and tried to re-bend the skid plate to give more clearance. After mounting up a passenger seat, fixing some more wiring, and building some mud flaps out of 18 wheeler mud flaps, it was good enough to go to a rallysprint.
The exhaust broke at a flexpipe right after the collector within the first few minutes. The car also got a little hot after each pass, and the suspension seemed a little stiff, but otherwise it drove great that entire day. Here's a video of it's first outing:
And a picture from that event:
I was happy with my purchase. I knew there was a ton of work ahead, but the car was a lot of fun and I was excited to get it logbooked and on stage.