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So, a little bit of background: I run BMSPEC, an aero parts service (not the cosmetic ones that you just slap on, but also track-tested, CFD-verified packages) specializing in hot hatches. I do intend to seek vendor status here once development on this guy is well enough underway -- fingers crossed. Anyways, my primary car ate its drivetrain after four years of abuse, so while it's under repair, I picked up this kinda rough, but cheap, AP1 soon after New Years. I'll be restoring parts of it (body), upgrading others (suspension), and slowly turn it into a mild street/track machine that can provide useful data for my R&D activities.
Firstly, the good: Despite obvious signs that the car used to be stanced, the frame rails are mint and subframes are intact. The immediately previous owner had put in a lot of love refreshing it (w/ receipts as proof):
AP2 glass-window soft top
Mishimoto 3-row radiator
Silicone upper and lower radiator hoses
Fresh engine oil, transmission oil, differential oil
New spark plugs
New coil packs
AP2 valve retainers
Valve adjustment
New VTEC solenoid gaskets
New valve cover gasket
New spark plug hole gasket
New wheel bearings w/ ARP extended studs
Ballade Sports timing chain tensioner
Ballade Sports axle spacers
Megan front RCA's
Megan tie rod ends (bumpsteer correction)
Megan rear toe rods (bumpsteer correction)
TEIN S-tech springs
The bad:
Dent in the rear quarter panel covered by bondo, which had cracked
Chopped up bumpers
Missing tabs on front fenders
Missing plastic connectors just about everywhere
Faded lenses, missing tabs on all lights
Car exhibited a mid-corner "shift" to the outside after turn-in
Super creaky rear right shock
The ugly:
The paint was NOT Suzuka Blue lol, someone had mixed single-stage paint and didn't even bother to remove the emblems before painting!
In any case, it seemed like most of the issues with the car were cosmetic in nature so I went ahead and started ordering parts. I tried a couple combinations of parts before I was happy with fitment and quality, so end of the day, we have rear flares from Shine Auto (to get rid of the bondo'd portion of the rear quarters), front fenders from Downforce, new AP1 bumpers from Honda, replica Mugen hardtop, and new headlights and taillights to avoid the effort/jank of re-making the original tabs. Between myself, my wife, and a friend or two we managed to get all the fiberglass parts fitting just like OEM.
And Rays ZE40 w/ Muteki Burning Blue SR48's because I had them on hand Probably everyone will notice the cupping on the front tires, and many of you will probably call me out that that ride height isn't S-Tech springs at all. You're all correct, I'll get to that part next post...
Went to the body shop as they were finishing up the car, pitched in on the finishing touches (side markers, fender/bumper trimming for tire clearance), and finally, it looks nice on the outside! Picked up an Amuse R1 Titan exhaust from my neighbor, slapped that on:
Next up is the suspension overhaul; the front tires were cupping like crazy due to (most likely) cracked compliance bushings, and the rear right shock I can't troubleshoot, so it looks like the S and I will be spending some quality time together this week. Please stay tuned!
This thing looks hot without any lip. Id do the same if I didn't have factory side stakes. Did you do the extended studs? Was that type of impact enough for the front axle nut?
Did you do the extended studs? Was that type of impact enough for the front axle nut?
That impact gun probably could do it, but it's much better to use a big breaker bar and lots of PB. I bought the car with the extended studs and new wheel bearings already so Previous Owner really saved me some effort.
Now then...
As I'm no S2000 expert, I followed Rob Robinette's recommendations and instructions, purchasing Energy Suspension front and rear bushings kits but Powerflex compliance bushings. Harbor Freight was having a firesale on their 20-Ton shop press so I figured it'd save me a lot of time (it did, actually). Then oh boy oh boy oh boy. I was so mad during the whole ordeal I did not take pictures -- I'm sure there are better ways to do the job with better/more tools. I'm just glad it's over. Report below:
Removing the upper control arm bushings stumped me for the longest time as I couldn't find a bushing removal kit with the right diameters and do NOT have a machine shop at home to randomly lathe/mill down metal to the correct diameter (1.780-1.800" ID). After investigating everything off-the-shelf at Home Depot and Harbor Freight I wound up getting a 1.75" hole saw and plunging that through a pot metal arbor plate that came with the 20T press. Bad precision + 1.75" hole saw = 1.79" final hole diameter, Harbor Freight ftw! With the tool made, all eight upper bushings popped out easily and their Energy replacements went in smooth. Slightly jank, but no hard feelings on this one.
The lower control arms though? They can kiss my arse, 100%. Energy's instructions are to torch out the rubber with a hot flame, I mean... 1) burning a full tank of propane on the rubber doesn't break it loose, so casuals like me without MAP gas or hotter will have a bad day, 2) there are apparently early/late revisions of the Energy bushings! On Rob's site the manual reads to torch out the rubber (and leave the original metal shells behind) for all three bushings per four lower arms. I found out only too late (after a shop had helped me torch out all the rubber ) that on the rear arms the metal shells are to be removed except for the damper attachment point. Thankfully, one of them can be pressed out (like the upper arms) but the other has to be pried out. Aka... a friend and I basically hammered chisels under the edge of the bushing shells until it broke loose and then soaked it with PB, rotating chisels and screwdrivers and pry bars, oh my! until it worked itself out. Roughly 30min per half-shell, but there are four. Why, Honda, why.
The compliance bushings were the most pleasant part of this whole experience. The old one actually came out, and the new one actually went in, with minimal drama. 10 points to Powerflex!
Last complaint: Energy suspension likes to refer to their parts by number when you install the bushings, which is great and all on the stamped polyurethane parts, but utterly useless on the blank brass sleeves. If anyone else wants to do this job at home, make sure you match the lengths of the brass to the chassis "hole" it goes in, and the ID of the brass to the bolt that goes through it! Screwing that up led to an extra-greasy under-the-car moment where I had to extract, clean, re-grease and (correctly) re-insert the brass sleeves into the bushes. Bad enough on the bench with a press, extra fun on your back under the rear suspension.
I am not highly qualified mechanic, barely an amateur machinist, just a designer/engineer who knows how to MacGuyver, so please view all my complaints through that lens. But still, for anyone around my level of casual-ness (when it comes to wrenching) I'd have to say that doing polyurethane bushings in your garage is a terrible idea.
On to better things!
While frustrated with the bushing stuff, I picked up a cheap Bayson R front lip to destroy as I am developing aero for the car, after all:
This extends 7" from the lip due to an error in the 3D model I downloaded; I made a 2" shorter one recently to make that extension 5", a nice balance between good downforce at track speeds and not ripping the bumper from the car in certain racing classes that outlaw chassis-mounted splitters (looking at YOU, Global Time Attack Enthusiast ruleset). I have an additional party trick that will help support big bumper-mounted splitters, just don't have a picture till I actually get the parts back that I designed and outsourced.
In the rear, I designed my own wing profile a few months back that posts CFD numbers better than APR's GT250 (I benchmarked it as a reference, trying to keep myself as honest as possible). Until the production samples start coming back though, the car's tail is going to be naked so I picked up one of those Tamon replicas, sprayed it black and rubbing-compound'd the thing until it looked reasonable:
The wing, btw, will look like this (shipping damage courtesy of USPS):
Shoutouts to Amir Bentatou and Kristian Wong of VTEC Club/Super Street/SpeedHunters/etc fame for helping me out with the wing project, it's not exactly cheap to dive into original design, CFD and track testing and carbon manufacturing, but with enthusiastic friends like these it's almost a waste not to try! Hopefully will get to see this wing in its full carbon glory soon.
So I have been diagnosing several suspension issues (clunking), on-center steering slop, dead feedback (even for an S...) and trying to fix everything up to make it out to the track. Learning tons about the car but also putting a slow leak in my wallet...
We figured out the clunking came from stripped eccentric bolts holding on the rear toe rods. You could tighten them all day and the rear toe could still shift under load. But the steering I just can't pin down -- after aligning the car once, we rolled the car around and re-racked it, now the front wheels were now steered 0.5deg with the steering wheel centered! I've ruled out the bushings (just did polyurethane everywhere, last post) and tierods/ball joints (Previous Owner and I did all of those) and the total toe is always consistent, so to me that spells a problem upstream of the inner tierod joints. Thankfully S2ki has a wealth of threads to go through so, step by step, I will be doing that, and hopefully come out on top without having to buy a new rack.
Besides that, got the classic RPF1's on, ZE40's will go out for sale, fixed the front lip with 3M VHB, car's finally coming together and just has a couple more things to address
Been a while since the last update. AP1 rack was disassembled and there was tons of sludge inside, presumably from wear, so in went an AP2 rack (and EPS computer) and steering issues are now fixed! I borrowed an APR GT250 from my neighbor to test out at Streets of Willow...
Only to get sidelined at the track by the spark tube seals blowing out!
I managed to limp the car to Ballade Sports for a quick fix and overhaul, but the car decided to let something else go right afterwards. Driveshaft bolt backed out, resulting in grease and washers being flung everywhere inside the trans tunnel lol. Sorry for the lack of detail pics, things were pretty hectic the whole weekend that the car was having issues.
A few $ of bolts and many cleaning rags later, we got her buttoned up to the point where we can trust pushing hard again, which means, next stage of build! Benchmarking the APR GT250 was super informative as I have been designing my own wing for some time. Autodesk CFD used to benchmark other companies' wings and optimize my own:
Having gotten some pretty satisfactory results, it's time to go for it right? I have a friend whose day job is aerospace composites, so I CNC'd a couple chunks of foam and asked him to skin it in carbon (like a surfboard) for some prototyping:
The endplates were cut to spec out of some pre-preg "dry" carbon laminate he had lying around the shop (?!) and the end result is a wing element that weighs just 5.1 lbs with the dense foam core inside. Super promising! I had designed a diffuser to go with it as well, and he killed that too. Full admission, I haven't CFD'd the diffuser, as the underbody airflow of any non-flat-floor car is too complex for Autodesk CFD to handle. This is one of those things that I know should work (from experience) if it is designed correctly, so we'll put it through its paces with empirical testing.
With everything mounted up, made some support rods for the front splitter before going out to test:
and.... Send It! The wing makes itself very obvious at 5deg AoA. There's a definite squat to the rear from the downforce, and I can't wait to get some sensors on the risers to measure everything for real (and benchmark the APR wing again!
How much impact does the height of the wing have? Do you have a graph which shows the downforce provided if the height changes but rate of angle remains the same? For example the Mugen wing - I love the way it looks but as it's so low does it provide any function
06-05-2017, 05:28 PM
BMSPEC2K '02 Suzuka Resto-Mod
Probably everyone will notice the cupping on the front tires, and many of you will probably call me out that that ride height isn't S-Tech springs at all. You're all correct, I'll get to that part next post...
) that on the rear arms the metal shells are to be removed except for the damper attachment point. Thankfully, one of them can be pressed out (like the upper arms) but the other has to be pried out. Aka... a friend and I basically hammered chisels under the edge of the bushing shells until it broke loose and then soaked it with PB, rotating chisels and screwdrivers and pry bars, oh my! until it worked itself out. Roughly 30min per half-shell, but there are four. Why, Honda, why.
