Hi!
I thought i should make a build thread as an introduction of my car and it´s progress as a sports car. I hope to get some useful input and output from it

When i first bought the car this summer it had 120.000 km on it. No dings but minor repairs from presumed rust on the rear fenders where they rub against the rear bumper.
The car felt sluggish, not revving as it should but the previous owner works at a Honda dealership and serviced the car according to the book.
Probably being a bit blinded by my previous track car (EG with B18C6, S80 and a lot of goodies) i bought it.

Happy as a man and his brother can be on the way home


Attachment 193900

Well, shit had to be done.
I don´t want to burn my hand on the full aluminium shift knob and i loved the Spoon 5 speed knob in my Civic, so the duracon 6 speed was easy.
Kenwood stereo with full iPhone support with Spotify makes the daily ride a bliss. Before there was a hidious silver crap head unit. I also added an Modifry DCI unit for factory control.
The Mugen pedals i did not install. Ordered them before i got the car. Didn´t know the stock pedals was so nice Should sit nice on some other car though.






Under the hood there was some stickers. Spoon, Mugen and Ferodo. Peeled them of but the Mugen power sticker sits with mugen super mega power glue presumably. Some other day we will meet again and it will come off!


Project "De-f@#king" the car resumes.
I don´t know why and how someone does this to an S2000 but new carpets was high priority.








Power.
A never ending story. I said to myself before i got the car. S2000 is already a well tuned car with slim or none to increase in horsepower if i want to stick to N/A. The main object with my S2000 is to keep it as a very nice sports car for the street and occational track day. No compromise in comfort or reliability.
So a Berk 63.5mm test pipe is okay. No fuzz except for perhaps CEL. But that is within tolerance


A funny thing about power. When i got the car it felt pretty slow as i stated above. When i got home i adjusted the throttle wire. There was an unbelivable amount of play in it and i can´t imagine this thing has really been at full throttle in a long time. Felt like i got 40 extra hp afterwards.

Another factor to the sluggishness was the CTR OEM 18" wheels weighing in at about 12.8kg per piece. Got a set of Prodrive 17x7.5 instead. A lot less unsprung weight and as a extra spice - Spoon lug nuts.


At this time i also had "the folding roof as you go" -mod done. Very easy and very nice!
The hideous aluminium mesh in the front also went bye bye.

Then one sunday not very long ago. Like two weeks. My friend wrote to me in a text saying: "We whould go to Nürburgring". I have about 2.000 km to Nürburgring.
Well, i had a four week vacation from work so why not. The S2000 is a famous GT car, right?
To make a long story short. We got there, drove the ring and got home in one piece. But i felt like a 90 year old man well at home. My shoulders, my back, my mind. Everything hurted like hell.

My friend is driving



And a well deserved sticker. 4280 km was the lenght of the trip made in five days.


Power. The never ending history.
After almost (probably) getting ripped of after my WTB ad at s2ki.com when someone wanted me to send money via Western Union i got my Apexi V-AFC via Ebay and a brand new Boomslang harness. Still not installed though. I am wondering if i should get myself a wideband o2 sensor and do it myself or pay some adult for the service.




And this is where i am now.
The car was slow and not giving me the feedback i wanted from a genuine sports car. Restoring some of the factory horse power and reducing the unsprung weight made a huge difference in driving joy. But there is still work to do.
The springs and shocks are problably stock from factory. Very squishy motion when cornering and the car has some rattling and clunky noises from the drive train/rear subframe.
I´m gona try to to the re-torque of the axle nuts. If that does not help i need to start checking for abnormal play in the drive train, loose subframe screws, worn out bushings or whatever that might be malfunctioning.

Last but not least: The dampers and springs sucked right? So i contacted Öhlins (ahh, local products ) and asked if they got the Road & Track kit with the DFV valve in stock. And the response was quick and exactly what i wanted to hear so now i´m just waiting for them to arrive

In the future i would like to see a couple of Spoon monoblock calipers on the car. Also a facelift front bumper with jdp engineering lip. Perhaps a different cat-back would be nice but i am not in a hurry in that section.
The most important thing is just to drive around and enjoy this very fun car

Any thoughts?

 

coming along nicely, love your headlights even though its oem for you guys

I'm in the same boat of just trying to refreshen it up, sometimes you forget how old these cars are (aps1) before you buy them

 

Really like what you're doing with the car. Also you might have the best english of any of our international members lol

 

nice! glad to see you getting it back to where it should be first, and then going from there - cant believe the previous owner worked at the dealership - muppet!

I would say a mugen ti cat back next.

Exterior wise, an AP1 OEM lip, or a Gears lip if you could ever find one. Also get some bumper plugs (or relocate the plate), they would make a huge difference to the front end they should still be available from honda. I would also go for clear side indicators, and use silver bulbs in the headlights to clear that up. Then de-badge the wings. All free or cheap to do and would make a big difference

 

Thanks! Kind words
I have already gone with silver bulbs in the headlights and relocated the front licence plate to where it belongs. Did a little cheat with the adult people that handles these kind of things so i got myself a small plate Pretty hard to get approved without lies and a smooth mouth


Still with stock orange bulbs in this picture.

Got a bit tired yesterday of always taking pictures with my iPhone so i ordered myself a Sony NEX-5R. Perhaps in the future i don´t have to be so defensive about posting pictures

Clear side indicators is about to happen. Trying to buy strikers and some other things from hardtopguy but the shipping is way overpriced for such small items to Sweden. I have sent an email to him but no response so far.

About the front end. Becouse of the aluminium mesh, they really screwed up the inside with PL400 or something like that so i can´t use the stock grille and as it is right now it look a bit damaged :/

Today was kind of the first day of autumn. The winter is coming... and so is 6 months in the garage. But i can still ride top down home from work

Oh, i almost forgot. Did a small acceleration clip from 20-216km/h. It sometimes feel slow in the vtec area. Don´t know if it is me or the car. This time with the camera out and all, of course felt slow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWpYi0pXoPk

 

My car used to feel slow in the vtec area before as well. I checked the throttle cable and sure enough, there was tons of slack in it. After adjusting the throttle cable, the car came back to life! -- Just in case you haven't check that yet.

 

Did some stuff with the car

White side markers:


Also re-greased the clutch slave cylinder with Honda Hi-Temp Urea Grease. Noticed that the cylinder is once replaced with a newer one and that was nice


Replaced the dead pedal with the facelift dito:




And then i got this package...


...containing some gold




Put them together:

Got one spring wrong from Öhlins. It was a bit to soft so i contacted the seller and he sent me the correct one immediately.

Fitted in the front:




And the rear:


Rolling on the streets like the dirty car it deserves to be

 

Installed a pocket behind the handbrake as replacement for the frame and buttons for headlight washer and blind button.


Some 6.5" coaxial door speakers from Amega. Swedish built bad-ass speakers




Spoon calipers.


And a new cat-back exhaust
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_ayNFXOZ-M

To do now is replace the front brake pads since the the most part of them still lay around Nürburgring and replacing the wobbly rear, lower bar.

 

Got hold of an ASM replica front bumper by Shine and it was already painted in my color


I also go myself a Spoon rear diffuser and ran into som trouble with it.
I have the AP2/facelift rear bumper but i don´t believe that is the problem.

First, this is how the bumper was mounted by some previous owner. They used one 17mm socket and one 19mm socket as spacers...


Then i removed that installation and replaced with how i belive the Spoon dito is supposed to be installed. No picture of that though.
But when the four bolt on mountings is at place and tightend this is how it looks:



But that is one thing.
The other more troublesome is the sides. The diffuser is too wide! Or is it the bumper that is too tight? Recommendations as a solution to this? Just stretch the bumper, drill and put the screws in? Just drill and have the scews visible?










Anyway i ended up taking the rear lights and rear bumper off to look for any rust, possible impacts during its pre-me life or anything odd but it looked very nice...


Any suggestions or input are welcome

 

Took the car out from winter storage yesterday. O yeah how much fun it is


I had to get myself a new hood since i came over a good deal on the J´s Racing Tsuchinoko intake.