Thoughts on a Sentra for a Noob entry?

Sentra rock... good choice.

I think about it constantly... We have a 96' sentra (NOT SER), and its been a dang good little car. Its just about to hit 200k miles though, and the wife needs a bit nicer  beater (no, I'm not that much a loser, she has a nice SUV also but likes to save gas on a day-to-day basis). I put new axles, brakes, LF ball joint, alternator and various other odds and ends, but it will probably end up selling pretty cheap this fall. I'd Lemons it, but already on a 2 car team, and have my Lex-Lemons car besides.

Have there been non-cheater SE-R's?  Our's is legitmately under $500 with the paperwork to back it up.  The thing is covered in concrete on the bottom side, so you'll have no problem figuring out that EVERYTHING is OEM underneath except for the exhaust and a ball joint.  New radiator up front, and we're ready to roll. 

Given the overwhelming amount of cheater SE-Rs that you say show up, we'll understand if you're hesitant to believe us, even if we do have legit paperwork and pictures of what was left of the car before we started on it.  So, be sure to check our trunk during the inspection Everything in 2's, right?

Thanks for the tip!  Yeah, our's has no go fast bits and pieces, which will be painfully evident as we three-wheel around the track the entire time.  we're hoping it survives and we get some residual credit to work with so we can go hunting for some ebay coilovers. 

Are other cars really that setup that a stock 92 SE-R is gonna have a hard time keeping up?? Lamest day will be our first event.

Here in the west, there are some mighty fast sh*t boxes.  These folks have been working on their heaps for a year or more.  The  fastest lap (at BW)was 6 seconds faster than our best lap.  The winning (BW) V8Volvo hauled ass...they have been improving each race.   For our first race, we brought a circle track setup pinto.  It was like we brought a knife to a gun fight.  We were getting passed on both sides.  My best advice...don't worry about being competitive for your first race.  Consider your heap a work in progress.  Stock brakes on a se-r will not work! for very long at least.  Try to upgrade the front calipers to the NX2000(they bolt right up).  SS brake lines, Motul 600, ceramic pads(Carbotech XP10), R1 rotors.  Use both radiator fans. Remove the thermostadt. We pulled off the leaky power steering pump.  It steers just fine without it.   We used an idler wheel off of a ford 302 for the tensioner.  We kept the side mirrors and moved the adjuster to steering column (JB weld).  There must be other crap that we did but I just can't think of it right now.  If you need more info just ask.

Thanks a bunch for the ideas. We've got new calipers, and 2 sets of new rotors and a couple sets of XP8's, Motul already in the car.  Brakes shouldn't be too big of an issue. We're more worried about chewing up tires because of the body roll. We've got 2 sets of RS2s that are brand new and a third set that's about 60% there.  The radiator we put in is from an NX2000, little bigger.  Both radiator fans are still in. All the emissions crap is off the front.

My team is a bunch of SCCA guys, so while we would love to win, we're on a mission to be atypical SCCA guys and run consistantly and stay out of the sin bin.  Looking at the lap times from previous races,  it appears to be way more about being on track as much as possible than setting FTD by 5 seconds (unless of course you set ftd by 5 seconds and never get a black flag...). Anyways, if the car survives, hopefully we'll have some wiggle room to reinvest in some real go-fast bits.  I thought we found a really nice car for the race, looks like we've got our work cut out for us though! See you guys this weekend. Ours is the puzzle piece painted Autism Speaks sentra.