New to me Sentra SE-R - any maintenance advice?

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A buddy and I will be competing in the BABE Rally in June this year. For those who don't know, this is a rally wherein teams drive from New York to New Orleans (Big Apple to Big Easy, hence the name) in cars costing no more than $500. To this end, we have acquired a 1993 Nissan Sentra SE-R. It was sitting for 3 years and will obviously require some basic work to make it safe, in spite of its overall reasonably sound condition. We spent three hours getting it running yesterday.

I come out of the BMW world, so if anyone has any useful tidbits about the B13 Sentra or the SR20DE, I'd love to hear them. In the spirit of the rally, we are doing the minimum to make the car safe to drive, but not really worrying about the other stuff right now. Nonetheless, trouble spots, model-specific tricks, particularly important maintenance items, and other handy information are all potentially useful, so let me know what you know.
 
Nice score! These are highly regarded cars for autocrossers. The SR20DE is near bulletproof. How many miles on the vehicle? Post pics!

What's/was wrong with the car?

Change out all the fluids, use a quality fuel injector cleaner, check spark plugs, fuel filter, air filter, PCV valve, belts, brake hardware...
 
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Well, it sat for 3+ years, so pretty much anything that is prone to problems after that much time is dodgy. There was moss growing on the gas cap, if that's any indication. It was non-running, but some electrical troubleshooting culminating in the rapid and somewhat violent removal of the aftermarket alarm system solved that. 120k miles on it. I'll get some pics in the next couple days.
 
You are so lucky... I cant get first gen SE-R's in Canada
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I love those cars!

Im gonna try to find a 98 or 99 Sentra SE-L or 200SX SE-R to fill in the hole :P

Super nice score!
 
Check to see if you can make it jump out of 5th gear.

Inspect all critical areas for rust.

Great find. Best of luck.
 
I would take a peek at the timing belt. Changing it probably costs money but there may be a way to, say, drill a hole in the cover, stick a dentist mirror in, and re-cover that hole with duct tape.

I am intrigued by the idea of bringing all these rusty northern heaps down to New Orleans... and, presumably, leaving a few busted ones there. If someone did the route backwards I might pay a premium for some solid southern metal!
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Reliability in the heat may be an issue, a manual electric fan switch (or just grounding the sender) so it runs more seems prudent.

Just checked the rules and there is no actual race so the hot rod sentra will just be better and more enjoyable driving.
 
SR20DE is a chain motor (thankfully). And the electric fan actually seems to work properly. But I'm sure we'll find something else to fail inconveniently along the way.
 
Auto RX comes to mind, I'd also exchange all the fluids oil, trans, coolant, break. Check the breaks and you should be good to go.
 
It has been quite entertaining in my few days with it. I've been getting it up to speed with some basic safety-related maintenance, but the spirit of the rally is to run on the ragged edge of reliability, so we're leaving most of the stuff as-is.
 
No, it's not stage rally; the BABE is more of a social event for lunatics that happens to involve cheap cars driving long distances. We'll see what we're going to do with it later on in the summer after the rally.

Oh, and the floormats are in the trunk.
 
Quite the looker for the age and Northeast, the passenger area is so clean I bet it spent its time commuting.
 
That car looks like it can be cleaned up nicely. Probably has a lot of miles left in it after replacing a few parts.
 
Just pray it doesn't have the typical MAF sensor problem. Many suggest NOT to clean the MAF.

On many nissan products the MAFS will make your stomach turn when you see the price of that little sensor.
 
Haven't touched the MAF, but I'm not familiar with the problem. Do they just fail randomly, or is it related only to cleaning? What is the failure mode?
 
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