Project Nissan Sentra SE-R: Fmax Manifold

By Aaron LaBeau

In this third part of our series, we travel down to F-Max Fabrication in San Diego, CA for our turbo manifold buildup. Jhame Peters, owner and fabricator, was ready to take the SR20DE to a new level. His turbo manifolds for Toyota, Honda, Lexus and Nissan engines have proven to make high hp numbers and give incredible reliability. Still, we wanted something better than what was currently available and, at the time, we were willing to sacrifice durability to get better flow from an exhaust manifold. As it turned out, we got a lot more than we were asking for.

To read the series click here!

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The Adventures of the Ultimate Econobox, Bonneville (video inside!)

By Annie Sam and Mike Kojima

A lot of us gearheads have always dreamed of racing at Utah's Bonneville raceway.  Since 1896 men have come in cars to the vast salt flats west of Salt Lake City to try their luck, not at legal gambling in the nearby town of Wendover, but to see who is the fastest of the fast.  All of the worlds speed records for various types of automobiles have been set here at one time or another including Gary Gabiliche's amazing speed of 622 mph which stood as the fastest speed a land vehicle reached on earth for 13 years.

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Extreme Engine Tech: Jim Wolf Technology's Turbo Nissan QR25DE Powerhouse Part 2

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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Keep Testing Fun: Mike's Day Off!

By Mike Kojima

Bringing you MotoIQ is a pretty tough job, we generally work as much as 80 hours per week which involves writing, layout, photography and wrenching.  On top of that, I am a suspension consultant which keeps me busy traveling and working when I am not here.  We don't get much time off but we love our job and that helps.  We really like driving but we hardly every get a chance to actually drive!

Other stuff we do for fun!

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Project 200SX - Track Ready?

By Wes Dumalski

It's no secret that driving your car at speed on a road course will bring to light all of the car's weaknesses. After sorting the motor and suspension we decided to take Project 200SX to a few track day events to put the car through its paces. While the car has proven dead reliable we certainly found its shortcomings.

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Project 200SX - Overhauling the suspension...

By Wes Dumalski

We're not going to lie, our old Ground Control and KYB AGX combo might have been good back in the day, but after too much autocross and track time it was showing its years. The time has come to replace it with something worthwhile, the big question we had was what do we replace it with?

Read more about Project 200SX Here!

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Keep Racing Fun, a Fake Blog Road Trip Adventure

By Mike Kojima and Jeff Naeyaert

Warning!  We are not hipsters, we don't wear cool clothes, girl pants, expensive cheap sneakers, fancy hats or carry vintage cameras around.  We are kinda boring so this story might not be too interesting, but if you still want to read on, have fun!  We have been working really hard at the palatial MotoIQ corporate headquarters.  We have been out covering events and working on project cars nearly every day.  Too much work and no play makes for even duller nerds so we decided to hit the road to enter Redline Time Attack's round 3 in Las Vegas. 

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Project Nissan Sentra Spec-V part 5; Lessons in Geometry

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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Project Racer - Part 7: Recipe for Racing

By Annie Sam

Being a fast road racer requires five main ingredients; 2 cups drivers skill, 1 cup killer suspension, ½ cup of grip, a dash of reliability, and of course, 2 tablespoons of horsepower. Now that you’ve learned the basics of racing, and driving through following the progress of Project Racer, let’s turn our attention to the next ingredient - horsepower. Though a detailed buildup of a Performance Touring race car could be found detailed in various other project vehicles on this site, what automotive project – project racer included - is complete without the mention of upgrading a racecar? After all, as project racer, I couldn’t race without building a racecar, now could I?

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Jim Wolf Technology's Turbo Nissan QR25DE Powerhouse - Part 1

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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