Our starting point was a very clean 2006 Sentra SE-R Spec V in very stock condition. Our mission was to keep it very stock on the outside, but make it killer fast – a real sleeper.
Next step – shopping spree! Treadstone turbo kit with all the bells and whistles.
Make all the parts and pipes that show black; the better to stealth you with, my dear.
The Turbonetics T3/T4 with ball bearing upgrade, all by itself:
Now for the fun part – tear all the stock stuff out.
First, take off the grill and bumper cover:
Next, take off the stock exhaust manifold:
Now to put the hot parts in:
Install the intercooler:
And the blowoff valve and piping:
The air cleaner and final intake hookups:
The oil feed and drain lines were also installed at this point. We were now ready to put the bumper cover and grill back on:
Sweet stealthiness.
Time to hook up the exhaust. The downpipe hooks to a 3” high flow cat, followed by 3” pipe all the way back.
Finished off with a Vibrant StreetPower 3” flat black muffler for extra stealth and an awesome mellow exhaust note.
Air/fuel ratio is maintained by an APEXi Neo AFC unit:
Well, that’s it for the first installment. Next up is the suspension and brake work in preparation for its first autocross.
Ask and ye shall receive.
Other than the Tein lowering springs, the suspension was all stock. I had just gone through my black ’03 with fresh struts, brakes and tires, so I put the two up on jack stands side-by-side in the garage and started swapping parts.
The rear shocks on the silver car were toast and the black car still wore its OEM shocks with 69K on them, so I purchased a pair of Koni Sports. I traded over the Koni Sport front struts, the new rotors and Akebono pads, and the wheels and tires.
So now the ’03 (since purchased by an old friend of mine) wears the ’06 rims and the silver car has the ’03 rims. This actually worked out quite well for both of us, since the shiny ’06 rims look great with the black paint on the ’03, and the silver painted rims from the ’03 blend right in to the silver paint on the ’06. The tires are Sumitomo HTRZ-II, size 215/45-17.
Alignment time. I used an Eibach camber kit with eccentric cams to get 2.5 degrees of negative camber, and then set the toe to zero. At the races, I dial in a half turn of toe-out while I’m changing tires. I’m using the same stock-sized (17 x 7) rims that I used on the black car, shod with Hankook Z214 slicks in the C71 compound. Really, these are woefully undersized for the Street Modified class, but I’m only doing local events and larger rims would require fender flaring. I’m still keeping the stealth look for now.
The car was now ready for its first shakedown run, an autocross on the cool kart track on the infield of Daytona Speedway.
Yikes, oversteer! Man, was it tail-happy; I was sideways everywhere. For the first two runs, the brakes were almost useless; it turned out an oil leak had lubricated them. I won the class, but was way down in 23rd on the PAX index. The SMF index is pretty tough, plus I’m way overweight for the class at 2700 lbs. on a minimum of 2188 for my car. I’ll never be able to get it that light and still have it be daily drivable, so I’ll just live with it as it is.
Time to fix the issues. The oversteer was cured with a larger front anti-roll bar, an 25mm Eibach unit:
There were a couple of issues with oil leaks, the worst of which was a missing O-ring on the dipstick tube. The drain line on the underside of the turbo was improperly crimped, so I replaced that. Lastly, the oil pan was pretty bent up from bottoming, so I put a new one on. Also, the rear race tires were heat cycled a few too many times, so I bought a new pair for the front and rotated them. Then I ran an autocross at Deland, a long, narrow airport course with a lot of transients and lots of third gear. At one point, I actually hit the rev limiter in third gear, which was the first time I’d ever done that!
The result was fourth fastest overall, third on the PAX, and a class win by 3+ seconds. I’m happy. 
Since then, I’ve faded back to the middle teens in the PAX as my tires have more heat cycles on them and the courses have been more sweeper-intensive and mostly second gear. Getting the power down in second is pretty dodgy, especially as the tires get older. More tread width would definitely benefit the performance, as would less weight, but I won’t do either since I’m keeping it stealth and streetable. Besides, I’m unbeaten this year in SMF, and I’m having huge fun. And isn’t that the point?
