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project cars

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Back in Black Jan 25, 2005

We got the SE-R back from the paint shop. The final bill $1224.75. The finish looks good and there's nothing shinier than a newly painted black car.

We reinstalled the side markers, windshield squirters, antenna and the rest of the trim doodads on our SE-R this weekend. The Team Dynamics Pro Race 1 wheels look pretty darn good in the anthracite finish against the gloss black SE-R. Now we need to do something about the ride height! 

Clutch Jan 26, 2005

Here's the clutch we're putting in the SE-R, a stock replacement Luk set. The NISMO LSD is priced competitively at $700. It's a clutch-type unit. To install the LSD, we needed to order about $200 worth of bearings and seals from Mossy Nissan.

This weekend, we removed the transmission from our SE-R to install our "new" clutch and NISMO clutch-type LSD. The removal of the transmission was pretty straightforward, and took about two hours. Well, two hours except for that last bolt in the rear engine mount that we couldn't see. Took us another half an hour to find that little bugger. With the transmission on the ground, we degreased and pressure-washed it so that it was nice and clean for its trip to BSI Racing for the diff install.

Today, our friendly UPS man delivered coilovers, anti-rollbars and a lower control arm brace from Progress Group. It's excellent timing, as we already have the front struts half way off already.  

Progress Feb 2, 2005

We started on the rear of the car, removing the stock spring and strut assembly. Scott, playing the part of helper monkey and picture taker, as we realize that we installed the Active Tuning rear strut reinforcement bar upside down. Doh! We started on the rear of the car, removing the stock spring and strut assembly. Scott, playing the part of helper monkey and picture taker, as we realize that we installed the Active Tuning rear strut reinforcement bar upside down. Doh!

Last night we opened up the boxes from Progress. Good stuff. We've got some free time this evening to start the installs.

Our SE-R in our garage waiting for its transmission to get back and now waiting for us to install the suspension pieces.

The stock front bar is made out of hollow 27mm tubing. The Progress front bar is 30mm solid. The Progress front bar is adjustable.

The front Progress brace is triangulated to the subframe. We'll probably bolt it on, then undo the center bolts for larger events. If this doesn't work, we may modify the piece to remove the center bolts.

The rear strut tower bar is from Active Tuning. It's pretty nifty anodized aluminum and weighs just a few pounds.

We also assembled the Progress coilovers and started working on the rear suspension of our SE-R. Assembling the Progress coilovers is pretty simple. We set each of the threaded adjusters in the middle of their range. We'll adjust them correctly once the car is on the ground.

This is a look at what we've spent so far. Some of the purchases have been unnecessary for this project from a performance standpoint. We didn't need to paint the car, we wanted to. Other high dollar items are the Progress coilovers, which are actually less expensive than other options, and the LSD, which is widely regarded as the key to strong FWD performance on an autocross course.

  • $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
  • $100 Used Falken Azenis Tires
  • $700 NISMO LSD
  • $1225 Paint/Bodywork
  • $1300 Progress Coilovers
  • $200 Misc Bearings/Seals for transmission
  • $140 Progress lower control arm brace
  • $380 Progress front and rear anti-roll bars
  • $150 NX2000 Brake Calipers and Carriers
  • $? Carbotech Bobcat pads and NX2000 rotors
  • $470 Nissan Motorsports header
  • $60 good used foglights

Total Spent: $7340, plus the brake stuff.

Things we can sell at this point:

  • Stock SE-R alloy wheels
  • Set of nearly new KYB GR2 shocks
  • Stock front and rear anti-roll bars.  

Cram Feb 11, 2005

You don't want to lower an SE-R that much, as the suspension geometry starts getting pretty wacky at lower ride heights. The ride height is about 5.75" in the front and 6.25" in the rear, measured at the lowest point on the rocker panel (the crimped bottom edge) The Ground Control camber plates bolt into the SE-R with no modification. We adjusted our 'base' caster to the middle of the plates adjustment range, for now. The Ground Control camber plates need a spacer/centering nut to keep the strut shaft centered in the camber plates spherical bearing. The supplied nut was not the quite right size, but this crusty nut from one of our old Volvos had the right OD and ID to work. Ground Control and Progress are both wo We then used the supplied adapters from Ground Control to mate with the spherical bearing in the camber plate. We used a similiar adapter on the top of the spherical bearing as well. Installed and ready to travel to the alignment shop.

We got the transmission back from BSI Racing with the NISMO clutch-type LSD installed. It took Stu about 4 hours to install the diff in our tranny. While everything was apart, we also had him put new fifth gear parts in. The transmission reinstall took us about 2.5 hours. We didn't use a tranny jack to lift the transmission into place, it was possible to bench-press the sucker in there. A few ibuprofen in the morning were the only downside to that method.

With the transmission back in, we decided to go ahead and install the Progress front coilovers, without camber plates. We've got an event coming up this weekend and wanted to get the rest of the car back on the road so that we could shake out any bugs a few days beforehand. The car rides pretty darn well. We'd say the jump from stock size wheels and tires to 50-series Falkens was actually more detrimental to ride quality than the big anti-roll bars and stiffer springs. We can feel the NISMO LSD doing its job on tighter corners, but it's not intrusive like some lockers.

Of course, the friendly UPS man dropped off a box of love from Ground Control and we tore apart the suspension again to mount these up. There was some issue with mounting the Progress coilovers to Ground Control camber plates, but we think we've got it mostly straightened out. It's pretty awesome that Progress includes directions and extra bumpstops to work with the Ground Control camber plates and Ground Control is working on adapters to mate seamlessly with the Progress coilovers. Cooperation like this between competing companies is pretty rare!

The car is at the alignment shop now. We asked for 3 degrees of negative camber in the front, 1/8" total toe out with 5 degrees of caster. For the rear, 1.5 degrees of negative camber and zero toe will do us fine.  

A learning experience Feb 14, 2005

Kim and Per autocrossed this weekend with Martin Sports Car Club. Bride steering wheel

We autocrossed this weekend with the Martin Sports Car Club. The course wasn't what we'd call favorable for a "slow" car. There were several 10-60 mph acceleration runs that helped out the Corvettes, WRXs and other high horsepower cars more than a our little SE-R. In STX, we wound up second place behind a well-driven WRX by about 2/10ths of a second.

The car felt a little pushy in corners. We're resisting the urge to take the large Progress front bar off of the car and go back to the stock one. Why? Because we looked at the build dates on these Falkens we've got: 49th week of 2001. Falkens don't have that long of a useful lifespan, so we'll wait for our new Falken 615s to show up before we start changing things willy-nilly. We got the car "built" quickly, but now we need to use the 8 months until Solo II Nationals to dial-in what we've got.

The autocross course's long straights and short braking zones made us realize that the SE-Rs stock brakes with no-name pads just don't have the stopping power that we'd like. So, we're collecting parts to improve this area of the car's performance. We're going to use Goodridge stainless brake lines from The Tire Rack and Carbotech Bobcat pads. Later we'll be upgrading to the larger brakes from the SE-Rs cousin, the NX2000.

We picked up a "Bride Leather Wrapped Steering Wheel" on eBay for $12. Of course, they hose you $28 for shipping, but still, it's a comfy steering wheel that has that super-wacky Bride "Holding Monster" logo for a horn button. We got a HKB hub adapter from one of our friends on SR20Forums.com. To get the steering wheel closer to us and further away from the turn signal stalk, we used a 15mm spacer from LTB Motorsports.  

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