My NotAMiata dual purpose build - Honda S2000

Blimey, I don't think the valve cover on this car has ever been off. It took me almost two hours to carefully remove it. The gaskets were baked to the head, the various rubber hoses were baked to the valve cover and the rubber grommets pretty much had the consistency of Lego plastic instead of rubber.

I'm seeing a few things under the valve cover that I'm not super happy with, including the fact that it probably didn't have a valve adjustment in 16 years, but so far things look OK in general. More to come later today.

Over half the exhaust valves were tight, fortunately they a still had a little play left. Trying to set them somewhere between .25mm-.27mm.

My HF "lightsaber" ran out of juice with three valves to go. Looks like buttoning it up will have to wait until after work tomorrow then.  Ah well, at least that way I can watch the last stage of the Daytona 500. 

Well it doesn't help when you're too sick to work on your car . Still haven't buttoned up the car but was at least well enough to try and spend some money on a seat.

Looks like the official Bride dealers that answer the phone are all selling the same inventory (or at least have the exact same model of seat for sale, and all of them have exactly one left), and none of them seem to have the driver's side seat rail in stock. I don't think the Dorifto "seat mount" using zip ties is going to pass tech, so I have to pass.

ETA for more rails seem to be the end of March, with that timeframe I might as well check some vendors in Japan and see if I can save some money and get the seat and rail at the same time.

As usual the joke is that I can get plenty of knock-off seats of the exact model I'm after (Bride Stradia II), but genuine ones are harder to come by. Ah well.

I've never paid much attention to these cars, at least not since the originals were brand new. Where do they fall on the performance/$consumables spectrum when compared to a Miata or MR2 Spyder?

...asking for a friend...

In reply to Woody :

They're a bit stiffer than an NA/NB Miata, and are somewhat quicker as long as you keep them in the VTEC just kicked in yo! zone. They also happen to fit people who are not Japanese sized (in length, not width). I actually have a semblance of headroom, which is a completely new feeling for someone used to Miatas.

That said, consumables are a bit more expensive - a set of sticky stock size tires start at about $600 at TireRack - and if people complain about the prices of Miata hardtops I'm happy to explain to them how much an OEM hardtop for an S2k costs (hint: a tad more). Oh, and you can get Max Pee Dingrods for them too, at the same low low price!

More seriously, the quality aftermarket stuff is more expensive than for a Miata, and I find it a tad harder to get (plus there is less of it). You can still get pretty much anything you need though, including turbos and superchargers. Like a Miata, the chassis can handle more power.

We'll see how hard it really is on consumables when I actually take it to the track.

Given that they tend to be considerably more expensive than a Miata, you don't see quite as many with questionable mods like you do NA and NB Miatas, although the AP1 (00-03) generation is cheap enough that people are now doing questionable things to them.

Oh, and the aforementioned seat drops you at least another inch without any surgery to floors or mounting points.

Right, went over the valves again and decided to set the exhaust valves closer to .27mm rather than the .25mm I had set them to in the first round. OK, I found one of my stubby feeler gauges that just happen to have .009" and .011" blades that are smack bang in the middle of the adjustment range for both intake and exhaust valves. It'll be interesting to see if it runs any better as these are a bit notorious for running like cr*p if the exhaust valves are tight.

One other annoyance is that the paint is coming off the valve cover, so I'm currently debating if I'm putting the existing cover back on, or see if I can meet up with someone who's selling a brand new AP2 valve cover near Pittsburgh and put that one on. I guess it depends if the seller is willing to meet me half way or not.

And I got outbid on a used, baffled Spoon sump on eBay. Oh well, it was a tad above my "50% of new price for used parts" threshold already.

Well, I skipped trying to get the valve cover from Pittsburgh for now as I wanted to get the car back together and running again. Cleaned up the inside of the valve cover a bit - I didn't like the streaks that looked like crud that had been thrown up from the cam lobes. According to my workshop manual, these cars have 7500-15000 mile oil change intervals and it looks a bit like someone made good use of them. As per the recommendation from the LHTPerformance guys on YouTube, I did replace all the gaskets with new ones. The ones that were on the valve cover were rock hard and it actually took some doing getting the grommets around the spark plug wells out. The new rubber parts are a lot more pliable. Well, there's a surprise. Valve cover ready to go back on the car:

You can kinda see similar marks on the cam lobes themselves. For now I'll stick to "they all look like that":

Before I put the valve cover on, I also changed out the spark plugs. The ones in the car were clearly the original plugs. They're supposedly good for 105k miles, but they looked rather worse for wear. I had also learned that apparently fake NGK Platinum plugs are a thing now, but at least based on some of the 'tube videos I watched on this topic, the new set I got looked like they are genuine.

I buttoned up the valve cover - we'll gloss over the part where I had to take it off a couple of times because I forgot to move the wiring harness for the injectors back underneath the breather hoses and also forgot to hook up the breather hoses. Good news, I'm now pretty good at taking the valve cover back off again.

After the valve cover, it was time to have a closer look at the connectors for the coils. I had broken a couple of locking tabs when taking the COPs out, and I know they are a notorious failure point as they get cooked on the valve cover on the F series and K series engines. I had ordered a repair kit already - Honda of course wants to sell you the whole engine wiring loom, but Ballade Sports and several other vendors have replacement connectors. The ones on mine clearly were at the stick-a-fork-in-them stage as the main (black) body of the connectors just broke apart internally on all four when I tried to get the connectors out. At least that made the job a lot easier.

All buttoned up and everything hooked up again, I decided I might as well clean up the MAP sensor, which sits in a little "cup" on the intake manifold and the hole from the intake to the cup tends to clog up over time. While I was waiting for the MAF sensor cleaner to thoroughly dry, I decided to replace the pollen filter on the car as a "while I'm there" maintenance item. Well, I don't have pink insulation in my shop building so I suspect the Rodent Mahal happened in the PO's garage:

There's a joke about what happens when you buy a car too close to the Mouse Kingdom in FL, but I can't quite put my finger to it...

I guess they didn't carry the Hantavirus, because if the nest was there when I drove the car back from Fla, I was breathing the extra filtered air for a good 1500 miles. Anyway, the filter looked like it benefited from replacing anyway:

With the filter replaced, the MAP sensor back in place and hooked up, the car felt like it started easier and happily idled. It was getting a bit late so I postponed a quick joy ride until tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately one other thing came back with a vengeance, and that is a rattle at idle rpm and when the idle dips. I did managed to finally confirm that it wasn't the bumper grill, but the undertray. I have to figure out how to address it because it's one of those rattles that drive me mad over time.

It's booked in for an alignment on Monday, let's hope that it'll improve the handling as I wasn't 100% sold. For the first HPDE/Time Trials I'm going to leave it bone stock other than maybe fresh tires on a different set of wheels and performance brake pads. I know I will need a seat, and very likely suspension, but I'm trying to be halfway intelligent about it this time and not spend 4-5k on seat and suspension before taking the car to the track for the first time.

Have a date/event in mind for its first day outing?

In reply to trumant :

I do - SCCA WDCR region is running a combined HPDE and Time Trials two weeks from now, March 7th&8th. I'm planning to make it unless we find something really unpleasant during the alignment session.

This is going to get interesting - unfamiliar track in an unfamiliar car, and the alignment done by people who are supposedly very good but I've never worked with them before.

Honda says the Spark plugs on these are good for 105000 miles. So based on that, these plugs are good for another 40k miles, right?

Errr, no. I think I'll pass.

Had to go pick up some parking brake shoes and hardware for the Jeep "NotAProject". Decided that I'd do something about my vitamin D definciency and take the S2000:

Would've been criminal not to.

This was actually the first drive since I've been at the brakes other than driving it a mile down the road and turn around. The good news is that the brake job seems to have fixed the "stepped" brake function where you could either slow down gently or had to step on the pedal with full "stopyabarsteward" effort if you wanted to slow down at a somewhat less than gentle pace. Now they're nice and progressive, and thanks to the efforts of a $%&#=##=!&%!!!!! mini van driver I can also confirm that the Hawk HPS pads are now fully bedded in. Yeah, I know it's hard to see anything smaller than an eighteen wheeler, have to tried an eye doctor yet?

On the not so good news front is that it now seems to pull harder to the right than it did before. Not in a dangerous fashion but it's noticeable. We'll see if tomorrow's alignment makes a difference or not, otherwise I have to go over the brakes again.

There also seems to be something else wrong with the car. Driving back from the car parts emporium should've taken an hour, but I got home a good two hours later and with an additional 50-odd miles on the odometer. Strange.

Back from the alignment shop and it's mostly good news. The pull to the right is more or less gone - having toe out on one of the rear wheels apparently isn't a Good Thing (tm) for stability. The car now has some negative camber both front and rear, plus front and rear toe set properly. One thing we noticed is that the front subframe may have shifted a bit to the right based on the available adjustment range for both camber and toe in the front. I was considering some Spoon rigid collars already as these are a bit susceptible to the subframe moving ever so slightly, so those now go on the shopping list, too.

What does it drive like now that it's got the semblance of an alignment? For starters, it actually goes around corners properly. That's a good thing. It doesn't quite feel as playful as a properly set up Miata, though, it feels like it takes its job more serious. Either way, it's progress and I like the way it goes around corners.

Oh, and with the Rodent Mahal removed I'm actually getting airflow through the heater without the fan turned on.

I shudder at the thought of what I was breathing in all the way up from FL.

As far as firearm/foot interfaces go, this was a doozy.

I'm booked for a weekend of fun at the track, and there are three tasks left for tonight - change the diff oil, swap the brake pads for track pads and change the engine oil. So that's what, a relaxed hour or so in the garage, right?

Guess who needs a 23mm and 24mm socket for the diff oil change that he doesn't actually have amongst his pile of tools?

Ah well, driving to Harbor Freight tomorrow morning is almost as good as driving to Summit Point, no?

From the "what else can possibly go wrong?" department.

Got myself a nice set of ICON sockets that cover these required size. Fit seem to be minimally on the lose side, but overall not bad for me money. So far, so good.

Only that Honda in their infinite wisdom decided to not leave enough space between the diff carrier and the diff to actually get the socket on and use a wrench. And I don't have a 23mm wrench...

Let's hope that NAPA isn't fibbing that they have one in stock.

All that to change less than a quart's worth of diff oil.

After buying what felt like every 23mm wrench and socket in the county, I now have fresh diff fluid, a somewhat quieter rear diff, fresh oil in the engine and HP+ brake pads.

Right, let' s see if I pass tech with it tomorrow morning and enjoy myself on the track. Hooray for two day events.

Well gloss over the bit of having to get up at 5:30am to get to the track in time, on the day of the daylight savings time switchover.

I was going to mention that you need a wrench for the 23mm. Looks like you figure it out on your own 

In reply to Slippery :

I did figure it out - once under the car with the brand new socket and a ratchet. Oops. 
 

Made it to  Summit Point this morning and so far survived the orientation laps. Let's see how things go once we travel at speed. 

So, whats the verdict after the track day? Did you enjoy the car?

Did you ever get the Spoon brakes? What brake pads did you use and how did the discs hold up?

BoxheadTim said:

Guess who needs a 23mm and 24mm socket for the diff oil change that he doesn't actually have amongst his pile of tools?

So the drain and fill plugs are different overly large sizes?  On a Honda?  Does not compute...I mean if it was a Ford they'd be something like 16mm but they'd be the same...

In reply to secretariata :

That's correct. 

Slippery said:

So, whats the verdict after the track day? Did you enjoy the car?

There are parts of it I enjoyed (having a stronger hamster compared to a Miata, how well you can get it to rotate with the throttle) and bits I didn't enjoy that much (steering feel? What steering feel?). I also got the vibe that the tech inspectors weren't too impressed with the stock rollover protection and would rather if I had a better rollbar. I don't think I've ever got a tech sticker with the advice to not do anything stupid out there. Which was fair enough, I don't think I'd fully pass the broomstick test in this car. 

Did you ever get the Spoon brakes? What brake pads did you use and how did the discs hold up?

Right now it's all stock, including the brakes. The only brake mod other than going over the brakes (with variable results unfortunately) was to throw in a set of HP+ pads. Not even braided hoses as the manufacturer somehow forgot to drop ship half of the set I ordered from Summit. The brakes held up pretty well but judging by the dust I probably used up a fair percentage of the pads already. At least this time I remembered to wash the dust of the wheels on the way home.

As mentioned further up, I pretty much had to properly free up all of the brake calipers - they were working (mostly) but about as reluctant as me working early on Monday morning. It looks like I didn't do too good a job on one of the rears and as a result, it's still dragging a little bit. Not enough to affect the way the car drives, just enough so you can hear it a bit with the aggressive pads.

Overall I had a good time. It was my first time with the local SCCA region and I was pretty impressed how well organised and thorough everything was. My old region was a bit duct tape and baling wire as we were always short of volunteers, but in this case, it seemed to be better organised and more thorough. Tech certainly was more thorough than I'm used to (and that's a good thing) and the additional training the put together for the intermediate group was pretty cool, too.

I ended up having to recalibrate my expectations as to where I fit in skills wise, though. I was more rusty than I thought (plus new track and new car) and based on what I saw at this event, I probably should shelve any delusions of getting signed off for the advanced group (and thus be able/allowed to run TT) for now. Not sure how I fell about that part.

While I like the car I'm not madly in love with it. Between noticing out that it'll need a new top this year or next at the latest and it really being too nice to properly turn it into a track friendlier car I'd like to have, I have figure out yet again what I want and need to do.

Oh, and jumping right into Summit Point's main track (which is faster than what I'm used to other than potentially Laguna Seca) may not have been the smartest idea, but boy was it FUN. 

secretariata said:

BoxheadTim said:

Guess who needs a 23mm and 24mm socket for the diff oil change that he doesn't actually have amongst his pile of tools?

So the drain and fill plugs are different overly large sizes?  On a Honda?  Does not compute...I mean if it was a Ford they'd be something like 16mm but they'd be the same...

Yeah, that surprised me a bit as well. Plus the "we give you the torque settings but you'll never ever get the socket and the torque wrench past the diff carrier" part.

Aaand...

The S2k managed to aggravate my clutch foot problems. Yay, another case of deja vue all over again.