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43 degrees here today, took the S2000 out for a drive. I-5 is clear, but south county, where I took my wife to work, is a winter wonderland. Clickity-clack goes my engine. Back roads are horrible with cinder, even though they don't salt here, the paint damage alone is enough to keep the S in the garage. What good is year round driving if it sounds and feels like you're on a gravel road?
Last edited by saving4one; 01-24-2017 at 10:33 AM.
Took the S to the machine shop so the owner could listen to it. He said it sounded fine and asked if I had done the valve adjustment. Twice, I replied, and that luckily I had someone working with me on a custom TCT because his shop milled too much off the head. Some other mild bs ensued about timing chains and geometry, with him not really giving me straight answers. He also skirted around answering me about why they machined the ex. valve stems. He said maybe I should adjust the clearances again to see if that quieted it down. I did adjust the valves one more time, making it three since re-assembly, and wouldn't you know, som'bitch was right, it was quieter. Of course getting a good reading with a feeler gauge on the ex. side is pretty in-accurate with the gauge catching on the machined stems! It is definitely quieter though, still not 'normal' to my ear.
I had been waiting for some decent weather so I could wash the car before I put it in storage. I'm putting it away in a top secret location in southern OR, until I fly back out here to pick it up in early summer. I'm moving back East and this time I'm leaving the hard top on for the drive across the country. Washing the rag top before having the hard top on for so long was key in getting the car ready for storage.
So, I washed it:
Took the 11+ year old carbon fiber license plate frame off:
And put my freshly re-worked ap1 lip back on (full story to follow.....some day):
Car certainly needs a good detailing and waxing, but I think I'll have to put it off another year, what with the big family move back to NY and all.
My brother-in-law followed me in my Fit, to the place in OR where I'm storing the S. I really lucked out and took a fellow car club member up on his offer to store my car. He has a really nice gated property and meticulously kept shop, where I feel the car will be totally secure
There it is going down for it's little nap:
Always find it interesting how drastic Suzuka's color change in different lighting, i.e. a well lit shop compared to my dank ass garage.
Last edited by saving4one; 02-19-2017 at 10:35 PM.
I'm glad you quieted the ticking down. It's already hard to get a good reading on the gauge with the heat shield, especially cylinder 4. The valve clearance will change once all the parts wear in, I'd check it again after a few thousand miles. Car looks very good, I wish I had an indoors place to put mine.
Thanks slowcrash.
I'm going to check up on my S today, to see how it's doing. I'm in Arizona currently, in the midst of moving my fam back to the East coast. I do miss driving the S on these great roads out here, but you certainly can't fit a family of 4 in it!
WooHoo! I completed my move back east recently, by driving my S home. It happened last week but I've been busy with buying a home, so not able to update here with words and pictures.
I took my 9 yr old son and it turned into a great father and son trip, where I let my son get away with murder and he entertained me with his great sense of humor which I'll elaborate on later.
We flew out of Rochester, with stops in Chicago and San Fran on the way to our final destination, arriving in Medford at 12:05 am. We had a fine time, our only complaint being that all of our stops were 'hurry to the next gate" affairs allowing no time to get some sort of dinner. Hell, we were on vacation, so I bought my son a half-can of Pringles for $5 and a wrap (which was quite good actually) for myself for $9. It was also the first time I was on a triple row passenger plane, so that was new. My friend Cody picked us up in Medford and drove us the 40 miles to Yreka so we could spend that night on his couches (which were quite comfy actually).
The next morning my son and I took Cody's Trailblazer to get some Carl's Jr for breakfast and to drop my son off at his school mates, where he was going to spend the night in video game bliss, while I went to Jacksonville to get my car out of storage. Cody took me to get the S in his Subaru, which at one point on a back road he did a launch, put me back in my seat pretty good. Have to say I was impressed, haven't felt that kind of acceleration since my muscle car days. I changed the S's oil on the lift of the car club friend who let me store the car there. Sweet, I have a lift back in NY which I've missed for the past 5 years and am looking forward to getting to utilize again. After that I went out to the Autocross track to say goodbye to some acquaintances that I didn't get to see before I moved my family out of CA. I picked up my co-chair from the Cascade Lakes hill-climb to get one last burger at Jasper's in Medford.
This one is called the MOAB (mother of all burgers), a wild boar patty somewhere under all that Cajun BBQ pulled pork,bacon, huckleberry-apple slaw, jalapeno crisps, marinated red onions, and cheddar cheese.
After our late lunch, I headed back to Grenada CA by taking one last drive up to the Siskiyou pass on I-5 via Old 99 out of Ashland. This is a great road I have driven just for fun many times, it felt good to be back in my S2000, hitting some picturesque forest curves, even if it was probably the last time on these particular curves. I spent that night on my ex-neighbors' couch after searching the web for road cams on I-70 in the Rockies. A 2'-4' snow had hit there that Thursday and I was thinking about just saying screw-it and going I-80, but I really wanted to see one of the last states I haven't been through yet. It showed snow plowed to the sides of the highway with wet roads. I have my stock wheels on with S-02's mounted and my fronts had balding inside shoulder's. Was not looking forward to hitting any standing water, let alone accumulating snow.
Sunday, I woke up to a pleasant cup of coffee which my gracious host had set up for me, nice folks. Went to pick up my son and we hit the road for our long journey home. I-5 from Weed to Shasta Lake city basically follows the Sacramento river canyon, and is definitely a stretch of road I will miss. Shasta Lake was as full as I have ever seen it. Hooray for California for getting out of it's drought, even if it is probably only a temporary reprieve. We got off I-5 in Red Bluff to get some early lunch at our favorite nor-Cal burrito joint, something else to miss.
After Red Bluff we got on 36 to get to Susanville. I had never been on this road which went right past the south entrance of Lassen Park. I had really wanted to drive through the park which traverses Mt Lassen with it's many "blind curves, extreme elevation changes, switch-backs and hair-pins" but it was not plowed out and open to vehicles But 36 itself did not disappoint and was a great California road with all the elements typical to most paved CA mountain/forest routes.
You can just see the top of Mt Lassen peeking over the top of the trees in this pic, shot at a canyon overlook on 36.
I feel a multi-part post coming on, so I'll have to continue this at another time. I need to go make dinner for my childrens and nieces.
Last edited by saving4one; 06-19-2017 at 02:54 PM.
That road around Lassen sure is fun. I ran into unplowed roads last yr about this time.
Yeah, there were still patches of plowed snow on the sides of the road in Lassen Forest. Then 36 dumped out in the valley town of Chester with picturesque Lake Almanor to the south to admire as we climbed back up into the forest. Next it was through Susanville onto 395 into Reno, then a short stint on I-80 to Fernley where we got on 50. My plan was to take 50 all the way into Utah, and stay in the little town Delta just 40 min over the border. We gassed up in Fallon, and then headed out into the desolate section of HWY 50, which is pretty sandy and mostly looks like this in every direction:
HWY 50 is nicknamed the 'Loneliest Road in America' and I was looking forward to driving this section of it, with it's average elevation of 6,500 ft and ever-distant mountain ranges. There are several Pony Express historic markers and dinosaur fossil dig sites on this section, and I explained what I knew about the Pony Express to my son as I asked him to "imagine riding a horse with a sack of mail out here in all of this nothing, in a time well before the cell phone". We passed through a pretty neat little town, Austin, which breaks up the monotony of straight flat roads by being built up on a craggy hill-top with fun twisty hairpins headed east out of town. I pulled over in front of the town post office to snap this picture:
My son and I are planning to make this road trip again someday in the S (when he is old enough to share in the driving duties), and we both agreed we would make Austin our western turnaround point. We pushed on past a petroglyph recreation area and the classic old western looking town of Eureka and made it to Ely by 8 pm. Where we fueled up and stopped at a home town pizza joint (which was very good), and I remembered to make reservations at a hotel in Delta, because I figured we would make it there around 11 pm. During our dinner I was telling my son about the 'Silver State Classic' road race which had something to do with Ely, if my memory served me correctly. I vowed to Google it when we got to our hotel that night. After we left the pizza parlor it was dark and my son quickly fell asleep as the city lights faded into the darkness of the desert plains. I was getting pretty sleepy by the time we crashed over the border into Utah. I say crashed because that is what my suspension did from the HWY pavement quality, which was certainly worse than what we had driven on throughout NV. I vaguely remember going through some sort of canyon, but it was quite dark and I was wishing it was daytime so I could see just exactly what the 'falling rock' signs were warning of. We made it to Delta around midnight, (lost an hour from that damn time zone thing) checked in and went to sleep worrying about the wintry conditions on I-70 through CO, and how, at that point, I had pretty much committed to that course, by turning onto 50 instead of staying on I-80.
That's it for now, I will update as soon as I get a chance, remember that 'busy' thing that I am plagued with
As an added aside, I forgot to mention that my trusty Nikon camera ended up being not so trustworthy, when the memory card slot stopped holding and reading cards. I discovered it had decided to be broken while I was packing my back-pack for this trip. Unfortunately I had to shoot all of my drive pictures with my Android phone, so, sorry about the picture quality
Last edited by saving4one; 06-05-2023 at 05:12 PM.
Sounds like a fun drive - cross country drives areawrdoms! Was hoping to run into you at the bible Creek hill climb this year and get some pointers but alas! Side note do you have a list of your favorite roads in Oregon and California?
A section of the course washed out/collapsed at Bible Creek, so it was cancelled for the year, but the NHA is having two events at Mary Hill. You should join the NHA and enter in one of them.
No, I don't have a list, but that's not a bad idea. A good place to start looking for great roads in CA, www.pashnit.com - it's for motorcycle enthusiasts but it works.
Last edited by saving4one; 07-01-2017 at 05:07 PM.
01-21-2017, 05:43 PM
which I'll elaborate on later.
But 36 itself did not disappoint and was a great California road with all the elements typical to most paved CA mountain/forest routes.
