i'm lower on some tein spring, i heard that you need driveshaft spacer when you lower a s2000. is it necessary?

 

I would say yes reason being that they extend the life on the inner joints when the car is lowered I lowered mine using Skunk2 springs and used the spacers and bump steers front and rear

 

As I know only for AP1

 

This question comes up so much there really should be a sticky.

The short answer is no, you do not have to get spacers. There are other solutions.

Let me show you what is happening that causes the vibration.

Here is a pic of the CV bucket and the "spider" (the set of 3 roller bearings that go in the CV bucket).



When the car is new the spider rides on a smooth surface in the CV. But as time goes on it makes a wear spot. This starts to happen by around 20k miles or so (this is very rough estimate based on folks who have complained about the vibration after lowering). The pic below shows what the wear spot looks like:



When you lower the car, it moves the spider to a new spot where it normally rides. Based on the geometry, the new spot is very close to the old spot. The vibration is caused by the spider sliding over the edge of the new spot into the old spot. It trammels back and forth there.

A spacer takes care of the vibration by moving the spider far enough away from the old wear spot so it can't trammel into the old spot. Swapping the cv buckets from right to left and vis versa fixes the vibration by giving the spider a new surface to create a new wear spot.

This is also why ap2 drivers didn't think they needed spacers. It wasn't until the ap1 was a few years old that they would have a wear spot and when owners lowered the cars after they had 20k+ miles on them they got the vibration. At that time the ap2 was brand new...and they didn't have wear spots yet.

Now, older ap2s have wear spots too and can get the vibration for the same reason the older ap1s did.

Is a spacer better than swapping the cv buckets? It depends on your mechanical skill and wallet. Swapping cv buckets is free, but does take time...you have to pull the axles. The 2-piece style spacers can save time and are easy to install, but they are $175-200. The 1-piece style are useless as they take about as much time to install as it does to swap the cv buckets.

 

I have a 2002 and it had low miles ~ 10K. I just did the spring install recently and haven't noticed any kind of vibration. Does that mean I'm good or will I get vibration eventually?

 

I agree with negcamber. I also believe that most S2000's especially if driven aggressively will have this problem.

In the hype of the "get your spacers before your lowered AP1 axles break" scare, I impatiently sourced a set from ebay for about $80 from a machinist from Canada. I thought, why not? once I received them, I checked all the tolerances with my micrometer and caliper for quality, everything looked good. (this is before I had the vibrations and solely on the premise of prevention of my AP1 axles "breaking"). Never installed them.

Mind you, my S has been lowered for over 70k, the last 20k on coilovers without any problems until just recently about 2 months ago I started having the "shakes" or vibrations under load after 110,000 miles.

I knew the solution was to swap the CV cups and had all the tools ready. Then I thought of just installing the spacers in lieu of the cup swap. I also cut my one piece spacers in half (for JDM look ) for easier install. That took care of the vibration and have no issues since.

It could have been an easy 30 min install except that I had to cut them in half and de-burr them which took another 15 min.

Just as negcamber said, you don't need them. unless you want an alternate solution to swapping cups to remedy the "shakes".

The only thing I'm concerned about is the little extra stress that the boots get from the spacers pushing them further out hopefully they won't crack later.

 

It will eventually happen, so to prevent it, get half shaft spacers.

Mine had the problem after 7k, more power speeds the wear process. My ex-girlfriends is doing it now after about 20k.

 

I installed a set of Tein S-Techs on my '03 about 5-6k miles miles ago and have had absolutely no issues. It had aprox 49k on it when the install was done, I don't drive it super hard though, just a spirited canyon drive or railing a freeway on ramp every now and then. The engine is completely stock sans a K&N drop in filter just for reference. Apologies in advance for my spelling.

 

I have a my01 and started to get a slight shake around 68k miles. I just recently lowered the car with some Eibach springs (73k miles) and the shakes got real bad. Swapped the cups (can be done without taking the entire halfshaft out) and now no more shakes. I packed the cups with Redline CV-2 grease (seems better then the stuff Honda uses) so hopefully that will keep the shakes away for awhile. If/when the shakes come back, I'll just buy the spacers....

 

I may look into the spacers. I thought it was just my car idling rough at first but is progressively getting worse. I'm dropped pretty low on coilovers so hopefully this will be the solution.