When Project Cars Become Project Cars

Everybody please welcome Cory Crelan to these pages. He’s a TTAC reader who had the rather indefensible idea to buy a pair of Nissan Sentras… of course, they’re both SE-Rs. Check out his story and offer your feedback as to his future plans! — JB

About three years after I sold my 1991 Nissan Sentra SE-R, I got a Facebook message from my friend Jim. He told me to call him right away. Jim is very active in the B13 (1991-94) Sentra SE-R community and works at a very busy repair shop outside of Hartford, CT. He currently owns four variations of the B13 cars between the SE-R and NX2000. When I called him, he had an interesting story to tell: A mutual friend of ours, Steve, got a job offer on the west coast and had ten days to uproot his family from Connecticut to Oregon. Steve happened to own four Nissans.

One of them was possibly the most well-known and documented SE-R in the country.

About five years ago, Steve bought the Sport Compact Car magazine project SE-R on Ebay. He subsequently flew out to California and drove the car home to Connecticut. The magazine is no longer published, but back in the day it was the gold standard for knowledge about the sport compact car scene. This particular SE-R was written about for years by the magazine. His experience with it was positive enough that Steve later picked up a second 1991 SE-R for his high school age son to drive.

Jim relayed onto me that it was not economically feasible for Steve to move his four cars to the West coast and that he was willing to deal on the sale of the two Sentras. His son’s car had an engine swap that was never finished so the car did not run. The SCC car was not driven in winters but it was also believed to be not running when we first spoke. He was looking to unload the cars at a fire sale price with the stipulation that both cars had to be bought as a package deal. Fortunately for me, July is my slowest time at work so I actually had the time available to sort out the logistics of the sale. After some groveling, pleading and a little begging, I was able to convince my wife that buying two economy cars from 1991 was a smart idea and that there was a possible financial upside to the deal.

The plan:

In the time that we were talking, it was found out that the SCC car would run with a jump start. The plan was then to tow the son’s car to Jim’s shop and have him get it running after hours. The non-running engine came from Jim’s old car. He did the swap on the car, but ran short on time to finish things up. He was confident that something minor was preventing the car from running. The SCC car was driven to my friend’s storage barn.

The SCC car was involved in an unfortunate front end collision with a dog last year. The short JDM front bumper and surrounding areas were all tweaked. Fortunately, the car came with a new Seibon carbon fiber hood and trunk lid, used JDM bumper, spare head lights, and grills. The cars emissions test was out of date. The parts stash included a new convertor that is needed to get installed to make the car pass the test. The car spent most of its life in sunny California so the plastic dashboard has more cracks and fault lines than the actual San Andreas. Again, a crack free replacement dash was included in the sale. The headliner has no material left on the cardboard so that will have to be addressed at some point, too.

The issue with the son’s SE-R turned out to be pretty minor. A wire to the starter was disconnected. With a new battery and some fresh tires, it was back on the road. It made the hour drive back to my condo without incident though the car had a difficult time holding an idle. The idle problem turned out to be some old and cracked vacuum lines. Once the car was finally running well, the high pressure power steering line decided to spring a leak — so that was a few hundred dollar repair. Both cars had sat outside for a number of months so they were quite dirty. I spent many hours with my Porter Cable 7424 buffer bringing the paint back to life on both cars. The paint came back nicely and both are looking shiny.

My plan is to sell the son’s car and keep the SCC car. My daily driver is a 1995 Mercedes E320 wagon with a 3.6 AMG motor swap. It is basically a running and driving project car. Three project cars together are simply too much for me to handle and way too much for the wife. The title for the son’s car just arrived so I’ve listed it for sale. I should be able to clear enough money from the sale of the one to pay for them both. The SCC car is a fairly valuable in its own right.

Just how nuts is this plan on a scale of 1-10? 1 being genius and 10 being Koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs? Would you keep both? Sell both? Sell the SCC car? Let me know.