Latest Articles
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By Mike Kojima
When we last left off on our QR25DE project, Jim Wolf Technology was well on the development path for our motor with new rods, pistons and the removal of the balance shafts. JWT still had a few more tricks up their sleeves to help the motor make more power and to improve its reliability that we will get into in this installment.
Follow our project here!
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By Mike Kojima
Although Nissan hyped up the Sentra Spec-V as a performance sedan in its marketing campaign, in truth the car was a little more than a piece of basic transportation with a few performance enhancing bells and whistles. The car was cursed with a crude beam axle rear suspension and a McPherson strut front suspension whose geometry was designed around efficient packaging and relentless understeer rather than performance. Because of this, the Sentra is at a significant disadvantage in the handling department when compared to its FWD rivals, mainly Hondas, the Scion TC and even the Infiniti G20. Despite of all this, we at MotoIQ are always up to an engineering challenge and we set about to rework the SE-R's suspension to attempt to make it a little more competitive.
To read more about Project Spec-V click here!
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By Mike Kojima
Compared to the late great SR engine family, the early Nissan QR25DE has a spotted history as a performance engine. In the performance world it has earned a reputation for being fragile and the many recalls that Nissan has had for serious problems from blowing head gaskets to blowing rods out the side of the block has furthered this reputation. The engine's redeeming features are a cylinder head that flows extremely well, a light overall weight and a strongly supported crank and lower end. A fragile engine is not going to work for our time attack Spec-V so we are going to address the engine’s weak points and see if we can turn the QR into a solid performer capable of racing levels of performance and reliability.
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By Mike Kojima
For racing, adjustable swaybars are important because adjusting the stiffness of the front or rear bars helps adjust the amount of under or oversteer a car will exhibit under hard cornering. Adjustable bars are critical as they can be adjusted at the track much faster than changing springs or other ways of altering roll stiffness to change the understeer to oversteer ratio when tuning the suspension to suit the situation.
Follow Project Spec-V Here!
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By Mike Kojima
There are 5 elements that have to work well in a successful time attack car. In order to win, a car has to have lots of power, lots of aerodynamic downforce with minimal drag, good suspension, anchor-like brakes and sticky tires. Of these 5, suspension is the most important system for a winning time attack car. Getting the best possible handling is more important than eeking out every last bit of power from the engine. Without good suspension you cannot get the most out of the tires, brakes, aero or engine. To see older editions of this series click here! | | 
By Mike Kojima
In our first installment of project Spec-V, in an effort to turn an unloved econobox into a sharply honed time attack weapon, we stripped our car to a bare shell and started construction on a roll cage. The roll cage is more than just a structure to protect the vehicles occupants in a crash; the roll cage is also the most important part of a race cars suspension system providing a ridged platform for the suspension | | 
By Mike Kojima
It seems like the B15 Sentra SE-R Spec-V just doesn’t get any respect. Unlike previous models of SE-R powered by the SR20DE engine who’s owners seem to love them and drive them until their shells decay into loose piles of metallic oxides, the owners of the new generation of SE-R seem to be eager to get rid of them, trading them in for the WRX, EVO, Si or SRT as soon as their incomes grow enough to afford the payments of these more expensive cars. |
 
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