Thread: From N/A to Turbo....then back to N/A: my impressions

As some of you may have noticed I have been parting out my turbo set up on the forums and most of it is sold already. I put the money aside until the spring when I will most likely sell the car and start a new project. However until then I will be enjoying my lightly modded N/A B13. Eventhough the car is slower than it was @ 8-9 PSI it is still "quick" and definetly still lots of fun to drive. It has plenty of pep and I still have all the other non-power making mods (suspension, tires.....etc.) on the car and that adds to the driving experience. I love to just rev the hell out of the N/A Sr20 motor, a couple hundred RPM right before the rev limiter it starts to wail. I don't know if the noise is coming from the CAI or the exhaust but it is intoxicating. On street tires I would imagine I could get pretty close to the same 60ft times when the car was turbo. A street driven sentra can only do so much from a dead stop. After this transformation I am thinking that the VE guys know what's going on with that power in the upper RPM range. It has to make the car easier to launch and/or control on a road course. Don't get me wrong, the turbo setup was great but there are some annoyances that will always be there, like lag (now matter how little it will always be there), part throttle driveability, power delivery, etc....but these are minor tradeoffs for the pull that a turbo can provide. Maybe instead of selling the car I will go the VE route in the future....who knows. My new setup is as follows:

JVT racing header (EBAY header) with the 2.5" dia. main pipe.
A CAI I made from some mandrel bends and some stuff laying around.
Reinstalled the stock ECU with stock injectors.
I always had a 91 intake cam (my car is a 1994)
I am still using the 190LPH Walbo pump with the NISMO regulator.
Changed back to BKR6E plugs from 7s.
Still have the same 2.5" exhaust with magnaflow resonator and flowmaster 60 series muffler. (I really like this exhaust setup)

That's about it as far as power mods go. I have full ES bushings, the KYB AGX/HypercoII combo, as well as tn ACT HDSS clutch setup with a B15 transmission. This hardware has no problem putting ~140WHP (my estimate anyway) down to the street. It seems like it took forever for me forever to get the turbo setup pieced together and running perfectly, then it only took about 1 day to take everything off and convert it back to N/A! Point of the story is that the car is still fun as hell without making huge amounts of power. It still makes me smile when I get on it. Here are some pics of before and after.

Before:



After:

nice car bro.... wha turbo set-up u had on se r b4 ??

Have any pics of the Flowmaster muffler and/or exhaust? I'm been contemplating a Flowmaster (I like things quiet) and would love to see how it looks in your car.

^Same question.

GT28R on a GTi-R manifold. 370cc injectors w/stock MAFS and a JWT ECU.





No problem, I'll try to get some pics up tomorrow.

I recently messed up my turbo SE-R and underwent the conversion to NA as well. Mine has a lot of the same mods (tires rims suspension brakes) I agree with a lot of your impressions in the first post. The only thing I would change is the 3" exhaust. Ugh. Gonna change that to 2.5".

i used to have a 180sx (240sx to you US people) with sr20det.
I find the VE much more fun to drive, i love the instant responsiveness, the ability to maintain traction (except at low speed in 1st) and the noise is way better.

Could you take some better shots of your wheels? I was wanting to go all black flat rota rb's in a 16 x 8 +20et but wanted to see how they would look first.

What size are those?

anyways, rims look tits on there

They are 15x7 Rb's with a 30mm offset. Flat black. I'll try to get some pics up tomorrow....I am slacking.

please do!!, many thanks!