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"Case Modding" a Nissan Sentra

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the rice-rocket dept.

Lawrence Person writes "Given all the interest Slashdot has shown in casemodding as of late, I thought they might be interested in an extreme "casemod" of a Nissan Sentra, turning it into a lean, mean race machine! Emphasis on the lean part..."

28 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Yes but... by gmby · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does it run LINUX?

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  2. I case modded my sports car too. by jerryasher · · Score: 5, Funny

    But I had to tell the insurance company a different story.

  3. Umm... by deadsaijinx* · · Score: 5, Funny

    where's the computer? Oh... no computer :( ...

    let's see .... Does it run Linux? (obligatory joke) ... ok ... kinda reminds me of the golf cart the school monitor used to chase me in when I ditched class. Seriously, this guy would chase you around campus with a damned golf cart. Once, I got him to chase me all the way to McDonalds (about a mile away on foot for me - funny as hell though, cuz he got busted for driving his golf cart on the street)

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  4. Awesome by Sialagogue · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is the coolest thing I've ever seen.

    I paid a stripper in Florida to do something similar once, but it turned out that even without all the exterior parts a lap dance still took two songs.

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  5. Old News If You're Into Imports.... by owlicks58 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would take a wild guess, and say not many slashdotters are into imports, but that was an article from Sport Compact Car from 2 years ago. It was actually supposed to be a joke, but a good amount of people took it seriously at the time. Sport Compact Car got a lot of hate mail the month after that was published, hah.

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    -Alex
  6. Where's the Neon? by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 4, Funny

    Bah, it's not a case mod unless you use Neon, and a blue-LED fan in the shape of a biohazard symbol...

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    "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
  7. DUCT TAPE by mesach · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am sooo glad that the only thing that they seem to have ADDED for some stability somewhere on the car, was done with DUCT TAPE!

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    moo.
  8. What an overweight turd by Snarfvs+Maximvs · · Score: 5, Funny

    They ripped all that off the car and it still tips the scales at over 1700 lbs??? That engine must have a cast lead block or something.

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    To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.

    1. Re:What an overweight turd by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well there is some difference. In many cases, case modding is about making your computer look good. There is nothing wrong witht hat, jsut liek there is nothing wrong with modding your car to make it look good. Maxing your gear look good is a fine goal. What is stupid about ricing is it is about making your gear look FAST. Many (most even) rice boy mods look retarded, they are just to give the impression that the car can go fast. Well that is dumb. Modding your car to make it go faster is cool, modding your car to make it look better is cool, modding it to look faster (and dumber) is stupid.

    2. Re:What an overweight turd by reverseengineer · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Yeah, the best parts of this article for me were definitely when the crew cut 3 tenths of a second off the quarter-mile time by simply swapping 15-inch wheels for those 19-inch penis magnifiers the owner had on, and when they removed those ridiculous spoilers/air dams/etc. You might have to worry about aerodynamic drag and downforce at Indy or an NHRA dragster event, but street racing in a sport compact? As these guys demonstrate (by taking it to its absurd limit), in that situation, you'll want the lightest car with the most powerful engine.

      The next time I see some idiot motoring down the street in a riced out 4-cyl. with a giant aluminum rear spoiler, glasspack muffler, "blackout" or clear polycarbonate head/tailights, 3cm of ground clearance, tires that belong at Indy, and decals for products the owner is not paid to endorse (and are probably not present in the car), I will remember this article. And then I will laugh.

      --
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  9. Re:nice magazine, throwaway article by afidel · · Score: 4, Informative

    436Hp at the wheels is kind of insane, not as insane as the Hennesey Viper but still crazy. I mean the Sherman tank is only powered by a 400 horesepower engine and it is 32 tons!

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  10. Re:nice magazine, throwaway article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    the sherman tank also does 0-60 only when falling out of a plane.

  11. Can't believe it took this long... by Shant3030 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Interesting that one of the hottest hobbies, took this long to make a slashdot discussion. Modding cars is become such a big thing amongst people with all types of cars. From Neon's to bimmers, people do pretty cool thing to enhance the appearance and performance of their cars. Not all look, perform or sound too hot, but some can be better than any factory car you can get.

    Its also a great way to actually learn about how cars are made and produced.

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    1. Re:Can't believe it took this long... by Osty · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, slightly lowering your car by cutting off a half-coil is recommended by some respected motorsports books because it not only reduces the center of gravity but slightly increases the effective spring-rate as well. I also know people who've bent their front struts to gain some negative camber, but that seems a little sketchy to me...

      I guess it really depends on the goal, but if I were trying to lower my car for better handling, I'd do it by replacing the springs rather than cutting the springs I already have. Sure, it costs more money, but then I have springs that were designed for lowering the car rather than springs that have been cut. Same with bending struts for cambe. If I can't get enough camber out of the suspension components I have, I'll replace them with more adjustable components. Once you start bending and cutting stuff, I'm loathe to assume that those components are still structurally sound, and that's the last thing I want to worry about out on the track.


      I agree, though, that most of these modded cars are slower than stock, although if I see one with big floppy drag tires on the front wheels I have to allow for the possibility of it being fast.

      Personally, I wouldn't worry about cars with drag tires on them, because I don't drag race (my car is not a drag racer, even if I wanted it to be). As well, the car may be fast, but if the guy is challenging me on the street I just shake my head and ignore him (like some jackhole in a MB C35 AMG tried to do today on the interstate -- he was driving like a maniac, and tried to race me and an S2000; we both ignored him, so he sped off like a moron, endangering the lives of everybody on the road).


      My other favorite is the cars whose main modification seems to be sticking the wheels out an extra six inches or so--the thought of all that shearing force on the bearings makes me cringe...

      When I see that, I usually assume the goal was to fit wider wheels on the car than stock. Useful in a RWD car to help reduce understeer/increase oversteer, since most cars have understeer dialed in from the factory. Pretty useless on a FWD car except for the larger patch of rubber, but then it's usually the rear tires these guys do, anyway, which gives absolutely no benefit. Personally, I might be tempted to put 10" or 10.5" wheels on my car (my rears right now are 8.5" fronts and 9.5" rears, with 205/17s on the front and 255/17s on the rear), but most likely I'll stick with the wheels I have and put 225/17s on the front when it comes time to change the rubber (soon). I certainly wouldn't go any larger than that, especially since I'm in a rainy area, and wider tires lead to more pronounced hyrdoplanning.

  12. Nissan is Mhz not Ghz! by tinrobot · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why spend all that money hopping up a cheap little econocar?

    Kind of like buying a $200 aluminum case for a 486.

  13. Better with a beetle by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I did this about 10 years ago with an old VW Beetle that a friend and I bought for $250. Here's the only picture that I have of it:

    http://www.michaelchaney.com/beetle/beetle.jpg

    We removed the body, then welded a small frame for the steering column, and used duct tape to attach the speedometer. We welded on a battery holder, and I screwed the voltage regulator, an on/off switch, and a start button to another plate. The gas tank was simply a two gallon plastic tank that we ran the hose into. (not recommended) The last mod was welding the seat to the bottom of the unibody, we didn't bother to add a back, a fact which made driving it a bit more difficult.

    Anyway, it's the same idea as this article. My friend and I were going to build a really fast go-kart, and we actually started welding one together. We had an engine, but when we started to buy parts to finish it out, we realized that it was going to cost another few hundred dollars. I decided that it was worthless, since we could buy an old Beetle for less and just remove the extraneous parts.

    I personally topped the speedometer out (85MPH) with this configuration, the wind was difficult to deal with since I had no seat back. The acceleration was great, with the extra weight gone it was incredible. Dumb as hell, but incredible. Funny thing was, when my friend and I finished, his father admitted that he'd done the same thing 20 years earlier.

    Michael

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    1. Re:Better with a beetle by th1nk · · Score: 3, Funny

      My dad did the same thing 40 years ago, hitting 90 mph, uphill, in the snow!

  14. Ugh by flikx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Add ~200 lbs of steel bumber, and another 100 lbs of re-bar inside the fenders, and my rust bucket Mopar with a 383 stroker still pulls low 14s on a bad day. Those hopped up go-carts are worthless junk IMO.

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  15. Is it just me... by UnixRevolution · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or does it look better at the end than it did when they started? I hate those tacky rice-rocket "I HAVE A SPOILER SO I GOEZ FASTAR!!" add-ons.

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  16. Er, or just get a real car.... by aiken_d · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My goddam fat pig of a 99 Trans Am convertible -- 3800lbs w/o driver -- pulls low 12's. That's *with* air conditioning, 1000w of bass power, and full leather, spare tire, trailer hitch, and body panels. And all for probably a comprable cost.

    Sentras are nimble cars... they'll often kick my ass in an autocross, if the course is tighter and slower. But getting 14's out of a sentra is like gleefully reporting overclocking a 500mhz Duron to 700mhz. There may be some technical merit there, but neither the starting product nor end result is particularly impressive.

    Cheers
    -b

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  17. Original Article by heli0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is the original article
    from SportCompactCar magazine. It is in print in the August issue from 2002.

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  18. Had to be done anyways by strider3700 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Before anyone gets too mad about them hacking up a perfectly usable car, this car had to be destroyed anyways. It was a preproduction vehicle. After one year they all must be crushed due to regulations. I personally think this is a pretty cool way to finish one off. I also would like to see a demo derby of them. You can't tell me you wouldn't love to see what happens when a viper hits a vette on purpose.

  19. 14.Xs quarter mile? by kwiqsilver · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My Porsche 944 Turbo has mid 13s, and it's street legal, and it's comfier, and it corners well, and it was cheaper, etc.

    But if somebody wants to destroy a Sentra to give me a laugh, okay.

    1. Re:14.Xs quarter mile? by timeOday · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ha ha, you just compared your Porsche to a Sentra! They WIN!

  20. Why this is funny. by spun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You have to understand the culture of car modding. It goes counter to everything that people commonly do with cars. It's making fun of people who install crazy body modifications without doing anything to affect the performance or handling of their cars.

    To put it in computer terms, these guys took dual pentium 2.5 ghz with a raid 5 scsi array and 4 gigs of RAM and laid out all the pieces on some blocks of wood to make fun of people who put a pentium 150 with an old ide drive and 32 megs of RAM into a chrome case with a window and flashing neon lights inside.

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  21. Thinking of Little Blue *sniff* by MsWillow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Many moons ago, I bought an old kit car. It was already built, a "Kellison GT", supposed to look like something between a Ford GT-40 Mark 1 and Mark 2. The basic car was a '65 VW flootpan and transaxel, with a 1964 Porsche racing 356SC engine bolted on. 110 cubic inches, 120 horsepower.

    It leaked like a seive, when you turned the wipers on, the left turn signal came on, it beat voltage regulators to death in less than 24 hours. The steering was beefed up - 3/4ths turn lock to lock. The suspension was stiffened - drive over a cigarette butt and you felt it. It could hit 120mph before redline, turned on a dime (and gave you 8% interest!), and ran on regular gas. I even, once, push-started it by myself, *up* a slight hill. It was *very* light :)

    I really miss that car. It used to destroy pressure plates and clutches with great frequency, and the last one I put in was a Kennedy Racing 1800-pound pressure plate. Even with that, the clutch was starting to glaze, just before the pedal broke. The idiot who was driving it at the time just gear-jammed it all the way home, destroying it utterly.

    I really miss that car. It had more spirit than any car I've ever had, before or since. I'm glad to see a story on /. that's about a rather different style of "hacking", even though it's not quite what most /.ers are expecting. Thanks for showing us that not only silicon can be cool :)

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  22. Re:Stop before you hurt yourselves.. by geekoid · · Score: 3, Funny

    what if they strap a jet on top of a nova?

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  23. This is easy with Minis by ross.w · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Minis (the original kind) have a front subframe that holds everything and unbolts from the body in one go. I used to compete in Motorkhanas (in a complete mini) against these two guys who had attached enough framework to an old mini subframe to gve them a place to put a seat, and strong enough to provide two wheels at the back to keep it off the ground. That was it. Would have been good for drag racing too if they hadn't locked out all the gears except 1st, 2nd & reverse (selecting 4th by mistake can cost precious seconds when you are trying to garage at the end of a test)

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