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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The Dog II

By Sarah Forst and Mike Kojima

Photography by Jeff Naeyaert & Steve Mitchell

Racing, performance, Nissan Sentra and basket case are not words that usually go together. This is a story of how a sophisticated race car was built from a pile of parts with a double dose of hard work and intestinal fortitude.

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Project Nissan Sentra Spec-V part 4: Installing Sway Bars

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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Summer Road Trip: Silver State Classic Part 2

By Mike Kojima and Annie Sam

As the Silver State Classic is in all classes except for the Unlimited Class, a high speed TSD rally, it is critical to stay as close as possible to the class target average speed for the win. Of course this is harder in the higher speed classes.

Read Part One Here!

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No Respect, Project Nissan Sentra Spec-V part 3, Building a Race Ready Suspension System

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!

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Summer Road Trip- Silver State Classic Part 1

By Mike Kojima and Annie Sam

The end of summer usually means two things; one, it’s the end of summer and two, it’s time for a road trip.  The MotoIQ staff usual tries to have a least one epic road trip automotive adventure during the summer months and this year it was a trip to the country’s greatest open road race, the Silver State Classic in Nevada.  The Silver State is a must do for any automotive freak; it’s a 100 mile all out road race across closed highway in Nevada.

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Project Nissan 200SX - Slimming down and cleaning up...

By Wes Dumalski

We realize this installment's title sounds more like we are getting Project Nissan 200SX ready to hit the dating scene and quite frankly that is what all of the odd's and end's we have been cleaning up has felt like... Only our crunches were done tweaked under the dash and the shaving of weight was done via mail order rather than a strict diet.

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No Respect, Project Nissan Sentra Spec-V part 2

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

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Chuck's Bonneville Adventure Part 2 (In-car video inside!)

By Mike Kojima and Annie Sam

The cars that run out on the salt are very unusual; some like the Cobalt factory effort from GM Motorsports are high tech state of the art race machines.  Others look to be the work of eccentric mad scientist types.  Others are decades old cars that families have run and refined for several generations.  Finally there are a few cars that seem to have come directly from the set of mad max.  A wide numbers of classes with very interesting rules assures that everything from a wingless Bar Honda F1 car to a flathead Ford powered roadster has an appropriate class where it can be competitive and go for a speed record

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