05-27-09
Check out our S2000′s at PIR on June 5th!
I just learned I’ll be joining Gabe for a track day on June 5th at Portland International Raceway. I’m very excited to get the S2000 in an environment where it can really show off! Let the grudge match begin…
05-21-09
Setup: New Kicks for a Modern Classic
Before I purchased the S2000 I had made a list of items needed to prep the vehicle for duty. The list of duties in mind were autocross, spirited country drives and track events. Tires were at the top of the list. And not just any tires, but good tires. To some that means a fine set of Toyo Spectrums from your local Les Schwabs. For those with a brain and a desire to do more than go up and down I-5 one only need look to Bridgestone Tires. Now some of you will say that Bridgestone is not the only one who makes high performance tires worth a damn, and indeed you would be right. Michelin is used by many of the top car manufacturers not just as run-of-the-mill OEM tires but also as performance pieces that in some cases is the very source of performance for some well-known car models (does the M3 ring a bell?). Another big manufacturer that comes to mind when racing and performance are concerned is Pirelli. Dunlop as well; funny name, good tires. Avon was big in Formula 1 in the 80s along with Goodyear. But let’s face it, Michelin is French, so they suck by default. So what, BMW has been running Michelin Pilot Sports of varying types on most of their lineups since the beginning of time. Pirelli is ALWAYS overpriced and the name Dunlop just sounds funny. I only see Avons when I am at an autocross or at the track in the form of slicks, and does Goodyear still make tires? I know they still have a blimp or two, but that’s about all I care. Where was I…
I will say though, I always tune in to see what tires are being put on new cars. This is a relatively new thing for me. In previous years I was too poor to even consider buying premium tires. I was happy when I had tires with tread! I went with Bridgestone RE-01Rs for a couple of reasons. First off, they were on closeout, and resellers were making space for the brand new RE-11 which is replacing the now venerable RE-01R. So I got them a third of the price I would have paid for them a week earlier. They were also the SCCA Street Touring class fast tire two years previous, so I knew they would at least be competent (last year’s Street Touring champion was the Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec). Did I mention they were insanely cheap when I got them? So cheap in fact, I bought 6 tires; two sets for the rear and one for the front. S2000s are known to wear out the rears twice as fast the fronts, especially with a UK-spec alignment, more on the alignment in a later post. A fun fact to know is the predecessor to the RE-01R was-fittingly named- the RE-01. It was supposedly designed for the NSX Type R in Japan and was a key player in the success of the NSX-R in competing with cars like the Skyline GT-R. RE-01s were also used on the Integra Type R and Prelude Type-SH. If it was a Honda and the sportiest model offered it had RE-01s. AP1 S2000s came with Bridgestone S-02As but RE-01Rs seem like the natural fit.
Out with the crap and in with the not Crap
I bought the car with the bastardized, red-headed step child to the Z1 Star Spec, the Direzza DZ101. These tires are a decent semi-sporty tire for daily driving and going slow at autocross. They have soft sidewalls and are pretty sloppy compared to other tires in its price range. I knew all I needed to know before I even drove on these. My buddy Bryan has had two sets of these, and he hated them from day one. Now to be fair, he said they felt better after diminishing half of the tread, and for the price they are a decent commuter tire. Couldn’t be worse than Toyo Spectrums. The previous owner of my car had a less than stellar review of the tire. Having owned multiple Porsches and a dozen or so BMWs he has accrued some experience in tire choice and preference, and the Direzza DZ101s were his least favorite. Him and Bryan bonded over the subject of the DZ101 and just how bad they are. As a regular tire I think they are decent, and if your first experience in an S2000 with them on the car I believe you would find them to be sufficient. Not knowing what is possible with even the stock chassis it would be easy to assume that these were more than suitable for a sporty roadster. But you would be wrong.
Making the transition from DZ101s to RE-01Rs was a religious experience. Turn-in feel is firm and planted, making the Dunlops feel like an all-weather radial. Mid-corner bumps are also much less sloppy, and the yaw of the S2000 was greatly decreased, the car feels planted. They also look really sexy. These are meaty tires. I chose to roll the stock-spec sizes: 205/55R16 up front and 225/50R16 in back. The Direzzas they replaced are the same specs yet these sit much wider. The aspect ratios look a lot more equal (front tires compared to the rears) than the others. The rear Dunlops were noticeably shorter than the their matching fronts, a pet peeve of mine and other S2000 owners and most tire selections in this size category, forcing most S2000 purists to stick with the OEM-spec tire, the Potenza S-02A. That issue is solved with the RE-01R.
At autocross the difference between these tires is very noticeable and yet very similar. The Dunlops were very loose in slaloms and ABS was never far off under hard braking. Debuting the Honda at my first autocross with it proved highly entertaining and very sideways. Every turn of the steering wheel was an opportunity to drift the tail and show how the S2000 can dance. In contrast the RE-01Rs felt much more firmly planted, most notably in long drawn-out turns that are common for our autocross course designs. You could take it into the corner fast, ease off a bit and cruise through the corner and still have a bit more grip for any last moment adjustments for what you might perceive as a faster exit line. Under braking you could be a lot more vicious, these tires are much more capable under braking as well. However it should also be noted that the S2000 is a hooligan no matter what tires you put on it. An S2000 is to drift as the mullet is to Camaro. As far as autocrossing an S2000 is concerned with a setup like this, it’s entertaining but not necessarily the fastest way around the course.
Some other tires I feel belong in the same performance category as the RE-01R are the Direzza Star Spec and the very new arrival that is getting people talking is the Kumho Ecsta XS, the newcomer taking over for the Kumho MX. I have been hearing good things and can’t wait to hear more about them. No doubt the RE11s will be a strong fighter, but will they beat out the much cheaper competition? I guess we will have to wait and see.
05-15-09
The Never Ending Oil Change Story
A post about changing oil. Thrilling. I feel bad for Dan, his story about changing transmission fluid is coming up too. I would feel sorry for you, but I just don’t care that much about you. After someone tipped over my Full Throttle energy drink today I’ve had my Dickies shorts all in a bunch.
Choice of Oil
I chose AMSoil Synethetic 75w-90. Why? Well it’s a good brand I guess, it’s synthetic and it was at the nearby snake oil shop by my work. I suppose I could have gone with Royal Purple or Redline which they also had, but I didnt. I chose this. Here is the part where I should analyze some logic I made up and reinforce it with numbers showing AMSoil being superior to Mobil1 and Castrol Syntec. I just liked the clear squared off containers with the honey-like fluid with the blue caps. It brightens my day, puts a hop in my step. That could be the meth talking. LE 607 is very popular with the crowd on s2ki.com among the other leading brands, if I had found this oil locally I might have tried it. I am not a brand whore when it comes to gear oils, so maybe next time around I’ll try something else.
Choose Your Weapon
I bought two quarts in case I needed extra fluid to prime the fluid pump I was trying out. As most of you already know there are dozens of ways to get fluid from oil bottles to transmissions, differential pumpkins, transfer cases, etc. This particular pump is made by MityVac (model MV7241) and features an in-line hand pump apparatus with removable lines for, I imagine, for easy cleaning and storage. As one of the pictures depicts, the end tanks of the pump that double as fluid feed receiver/sender and swivel, which proves to be quite useful. When items like this fluid pump are being shown on a show like Trucks featuring legends such as Stacey David (my hero), it looks like the perfectly designed product with the automotive enthusiast in mind. In fact, it is so appealing it must trump whatever devices you happen to have, therefore you MUST have this device! And years later, when you see it for $10.00 at a local shop you jump at the chance to try it. In the past I have been less than impressed by fluid pumps with respect to transferring oil into difficult to reach locations, and holding together long enough to get all the fluid to where I want it to go before it leaks all over me, and then it leaks all over the shelf i put it on. For the rest of eternity.
A person is usually in a very awkward spot, pinned against the cold cement with only a few inches remaining between you and the steel floor pan of your car with that $300.00 undercoating option you splurged for that does absolutely nothing except look ugly and make turning bolts underneath your car that much harder to do. Bottles of oil with thick vinyl/plastic tubes sticking into them pulling the oil containers around as they please. It’s never a perfect scenario and a mess is always sure to follow using one of these devices, it’s just one of those things. And usually the plastic hoses they give you are WAY too long for what you really need, and by the time you have the .9 liter of gear oil that is necessary to fill your s2000 differential trapped in the pumping device, the feed line is already sucking air, desperately seeking back-pressure to keep that fluid moving along its way down the 2 quart capacity of tubing.
To remedy this in-line fluid capacity conundrum I cut both plastic tubes down to about 1 foot in length (illustrated above in the picture with the randomly-placed bottle of Monarch Rum, courtesy of my neighbor). I used this device to fill the transmission as well, and no matter how neat and tidy you try and keep the operation the oil from these fluid pumps gets everywhere, and these contraptions are never truly clean unless you brake clean the crap out of the exterior and interior of these lines. Cutting them down to size will definitely help, and for most applications, especially if you are working on your car on jack stands as opposed to a lift, you probably will never need the longer side of the tubes you have remaining. I’ll keep them around gathering oil on the garage floor somewhere, just in case. A room mate’s tool box is also a suitable location.
Do Work
As with any car purchase a few extra tools need to be purchased to get at the usual places. The differential drain and fill plugs are both 24mm and having owned an AE86 which also had 24mm diff plugs I figured I was covered with a 24mm 1/2 socket. Unfortunately the space in front of the fill plug is conveniently blocked by undercarriage, not nearly large enough to accommodate my Craftsman half-inch ratchet and socket. Checking my options at Craftsman I was able to come up with a 24mm and 22mm combo wrench. Unfortunately the 12 point design and perhaps not the tightest tolerances in manufacturing creates quite a loose fit on the fill plug, which on my car appears to have seen better days in past years, and it barely holds onto the corners of the plug. It works, but barely. I think next time around I may just use an adjustable crescent wrench. The plug does not require strong-arming to secure its liquid contents, it just needs to be snug.
Other than the annoyingly horrible fit of the $18.00 wrench, the drain plug magnet told me good story. The build-up of ferrous sludge on the magnet was very minimal and what you should expect from a differential in good condition with normal wear characteristics. The nice thing about a gear-type limited-slip differential is not seeing your investment slowly transfer from the spendy clutch plates inside of the differential to your magnet-equipped drain plug in the form of shavings and small bits like in the AE86. Those were the deeply disturbing days.
Fluid was dirty yet chunk-free, and I retrieved about .8 of a liter, what you should expect. Filling was nice with this pump device, you can swivel the end tanks to make sure everything is sitting securely and conveniently. Nothing more annoying than worrying about the quart of oil you are 
dipping into is tipping over. With the trimmed lines and articulating lines I am happy report this was achieved. A word of advice with this pump: long and slow pumps does the trick, and relatively few pumps to suck through a bottle of oil. And once you have everything buttoned back up a little brake clean sprayed on the one oily cooling fin and both diff. plugs does a better job than any rag will do. That goes for engine and transmission oil changes as well.
I told you I am long-winded.
05-10-09
Silverstone S2000 at Sunset Wallpaper
I had rented a nice lens for some other work I did earlier in the week and decided to sneak out and take some pictures with it before sending it back. I went out to my favorite spot where I got this picture of my Ducati last year and decided to see what the S2000 looked like at dusk. Needless to say, I’m pretty pleased with the results!
Click the image for a 1680 wallpaper of the S2000, and leave a comment if you’d like a different size.
dc
05-08-09
Setup: Does This Make Me Look Fat?
At the beginning of every auto-x season I find myself pondering things. You know, profound shit. Are my ambitions in life a metaphor of the human condition to overcome great obstacles? Does my acute joy of this car make me materialistic and therefore American? Will I ever give up eating egg McMuffins on auto-x mornings? If two bros driving in a Neon SRT4 and BOTH are wearing flat-billed Famous Stars and Straps hats sideways, what are the odds that the bills are facing away from each other? Hella deep thoughts.
So anyway, at EESCC (local auto-x club) we are fortunate enough to have access to a set of Longacre scales for those members who are interested in using them at the test and tune event. I took the opportunity to see how the Honda ’2000 cornered out. After wrapping up the first half of the day I put the car on the scales with exactly half of the fuel pegs on the counter.
At half tank with me in the car the car is a single pound away from a perfect cross weight. That translates to an equal feel turning left or right. In some cars where balancing of weight in the car is not so equal in cross weights the feel can be lackluster turning in one direction but feel much more satisfying turning in the other direction despite having a limited slip differential or other factors that benefit handling. I guess I’ll just have to lose a pound off of my person to get that one little digit to drop. Maybe I’ll start eating fiber the night before the big weekend since I don’t have a whole lot to lose elsewhere.
The car has a slight rear bias of 50.8% at half tank which may explain why its so easy to get it to oversteer on course in throttle-on situations. On course all this car needs is a little bit of encouragement from the right foot and a friend we know as Vtec gets the rear of the car rotation enthusiastically. What is so amazing to me is how the handling of the S2000 is so polarized from it’s tail-out behavior on course at auto-x and so planted on city roads and windy high speed country roads.
It should be noted that my spare tire and tools were removed, and for those who don’t own an S2000 or were in TAG (and if you were sniffing glue when you were a kid TAG stands for Talented and Gifted) as children, the spare sits on the passenger side of the trunk and tools dead center adding to rear bias and may also throw off cross weight by a small amount if installed in the vehicle. I don’t have the exact weights of the spare tire and tools, I will have to look into that. Impressive Honda. You made a balanced platform right out of the box, at least with my 150-pound person inside of it.
I guess it is no surprise the car handles the way it does when you look at these figures. I am not one to believe that figures and specs are what make a car fun. But this isnt a bad start. Oh ya, s2000: You’re overweight! I guess it could be worse. It could be a 2+ ton Mercedes “roadster”. But then, as Jeremy Clarkson puts it: “You’d be a cock.”
05-01-09
Honda ’2000 Showdown
Two S2000s, piloted by IT professionals. Bored yet? The stage: TWO AUTO-X EVENTS! Oh god, please don’t leave. The silver roadster with a few new components to test out at this event was here to showcase what a fresh set of Bridgestone RE-01R tires could do. We’ll call the owner Ace. And driving the berlina S2000 on a humble set of Kumho Ecsta SPTs was here to set the standard with regular tires. We’ll call him Gary. So did the RE-01Rs take the gold or did the better driver seize the day? Neither won the day, Ace and Gary sucked it up and were beaten by a Pontiac Solstice GXP. Despite their failure to conquer their class they kept the competition fierce.
Saturday, EESCC Auto-X Event 1
The competition does not get any closer than it did on Saturday. The differences in setup between the Ap1s were a wash to optimum line choice and good driving. Ace’s advantage on with stickier rubber, UK wheel alignment and upgraded brake pads could not find an answer for Gary’s times. Gary couldn’t shake the silver s2000 despite his flamboyant roadster maneuvers. The result was a tie to the tune of 40.842. The 2nd place ribbon was handed to Ace. Ace reported that the tires and car feel was greatly improved by the tires despite his inability to out-class the competition. Frontal traction on course was the most noticeable improved feature with tires and alignment. But the S2000 is a wild one and inducing oversteer was still all too easy… Ace reports.
Sunday, EESCC Auto-X Event 2
A new day and a new chance for victory. Ace and Gary weren’t the only game in A stock. Another S2000 was lurking about, but it was a Sebring Silver, and no one cares about that color. Even less desirable still was the TBS Consultants Solstice GXP which none of the S2000s had answer for. There was energy in the air, like a hipster on the prowl for a new ultra v-neck t-shirt at American Apparel. Ace tried a new approach since he was finding oversteer on the inside on long corners and turn-arounds, which was costing time despite its fun factor. Ace felt by maintaining higher entry speeds into the longer turn-around sections and taking a wider line and sustaining understeering through one of the two larger turns on the course saved him more time than it was costing him. Whatever the reason may be Ace edged out Gary by .6 of a second. So was the advantage a result of the tires or the driving this time? The guy in the Sebring’ s2k was trailing the duo by a few seconds up until his last run where he just .1 of a second off of Ace’s best lap after a little advice on gear selection from Ace and Gary. Both Ace’s and Mr. Sebring’s s2k was shod with stickier tires (Dunlop Direzza DZ1 Star Spec rubber on the Sebring Silver s2000). Let’s wait and see what the season holds for performance from these three drivers to find out for sure.
04-24-09
Introducing Gabe Part 1: A Boy and His AE86
Gabe and I are going to do a series of ‘get to know us’ posts and we figured what better way than to walk down memory lane with a resume of our previously owned enthusiast cars that eventually led to S2000 ownership.
Here is Gabe’s first entry:
Well, where to start? I’ll steal a line from Richard Hammond, co-host of the popular BBC show Top Gear: “Right, Hammond here, great day for Motoring!” I think that says it all. Despite the many downsides to a recession there is a silver lining to every dark cloud. Sports cars have decreased in price dramatically along with luxury autos. If there is a time to buy a new car that time is now. A car that once was an old regular in day dreams is now a regular in the two-car garage right now below me at this very moment, which could have only happened due to great cars coming down in prices dramatically. No it’s not a Neon SXT and not even a 25th Anniversary Camaro (chhh, I wish!). The s2000 is what I chose.
And here I sit, with a roadster slumbering below me as I type this, reminiscing about cars I have long since parted ways with. Join me as I take you on a trip down the more interesting bits of my car history and my love for driving. I emphasize the “more interesting” part since I doubt very strongly anyone wants to hear about the tale of my Honda Accord. Yes at one time it did have Altezza tail lights and no I am not proud of those days. And when I say days I mean years. Sigh…
I am long-winded, so this tale of my promiscuous car history will be brought to you in parts. So throw your lifted Ford Ranger in park, grab a Monster energy drink and throw on some non-scented, alcohol-free lotion on that new tribal tattoo you inked on your forearm. You might feel a slight pinch.
1985 Corolla GT-S AE86
My long lost love. Such a fun car to drive and full of character. Not an easy vehicle to master if you are not used to a car moving around on you in the corners, but ultimately rewarding when you get it right. The AE86 is a great learner for those serious about car control and setup. They are easy to work on, unforgiving at times when mishandled, and a blast to drive. I was young and stupid, I didn’t know how good I had it with that car until it was gone. I vowed never to love another car again. But I kept on trucking. I threw on my pair of ultra tapered jeans from Wet Seal and flat-ironed my hair over my right eye and trudged onward to progressively worse vehicles. Four sets of suspension and countless other items and I called it quits. After two seasons of auto-x and almost daily country drives on the curvy roads, I sold it within the week of posting. So if you love your car you should probably sell it and be miserable.
To be continued…
