This may sound strange, but every year come late fall, I remove my plates and store my 4WD Sentra for the winter. I get a winter car each year to get eaten by salt instead.
I do however, take the car out once each winter for ice racing. I wait until we get a weekend with dry roads and trailer it out to the lake. Up until now, I have only run it at solo ice trial type events, but this year I decided to run it in the regular wheel to wheel road races on ice. I run every week with a club called the Adirondack Motor Enthusiast Club [A.M.E.C.] check out:
www.icerace.com. I normally use my '93 SE-R in the "Street Legal" class, but this week I heard we were going to have a short [1.2 miles per lap] twisty course with little or no straightaway. Hmmm, I thought, this would be a great track for a 4WD car where you'll have grip to rocket out of the low speed corners. So, I got my '89 4WD B12 out of storage and swapped the four SE-R wheels and studded Gislaved Nordfrost tires onto the wagon. I had a set of Grassroots Motorsport number board stickers on the shelf, so I stuck them on and applied my number. I bolted in a mandatory fire extinguisher to get through tech and took the car out for the morning warmup laps. Being used to having SR20DE power each week, I wasn't sure the GA16DE equipped B12 was going to get the job done. But I was really surprised just how quick the car felt out there.
So I start the first race gridded in the seventh position out of the field of 20 cars. Holy crap don't you know by the third lap I am in front and pulling away. I won the race quite easily. It was almost embarrasing to be so quick. In the second race I slowed down a bit and let them catch me. So it at least
looked close at the end. My biggest competition came from my good friend Phil's '92 NX2000. Even with the factory limited slip diff, his SR20DE was no match for the GA16DE equipped 4wd B12 on this day. Sometimes traction is all you need!
