strathound

I've search the forum a bit for information on this topic and surprisingly didn't find a good summary, although I've read snippets here and there.

Here's my situation. I'm looking at several used S2000s locally and nationally sold by individuals and smaller dealerships. I've read enough horror stories that I'm adamant that the vehicles should be inspected by a reputable mechanic. But here is my question.

What special things should I tell the mechanic to look for? I know the basics like looking for water damage, rust, alignment, signs of accidents that were repaired and not reported. But people have mentioned things like checking the engine compression and such and I want to make sure that my mechanic knows just what to check and what the expected results should be.

Any advice here would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks,


Michael

Chazmo

Michael,

You're 100% right that there isn't any great summary of this. I would love to have one to point you to.

I'm hoping to assemble such a thing over time now as one of my mandates here as moderator.

For the time being, I think you should go over to S2000 Talk forum and look around and possibly post this question to start putting the info together somehow.

Anyone else who wants to respond here, go right ahead...

rioyellows2k

You should inspect the fluids (tranny, rear diff, etc.) I've noticed on a few S2000's in the Service dept. here that some owners are running Honda VTM fluid in the rear diff! Or the trans. fluid looks like it's never been taken care of. You can usually figure out what kind of life the car's had by how the previous owner took care of it. A lot of S2000's are about to come up on lease returns so I suspect the pre-owned market will be flooded with a lot of '01-'03 S2000's.

When you come in, we can put the S2000 we are talking about on the lift so you can see for your self. Ours go through a pretty rigorous inspection process, but we'll have my tech go through as much as you want.

Chazmo

Compression test all four cylinders is a definite "must". You want to know if there's any leaking in the cylinder head or through the rings. An S2000 that has been abused will usually show signs of it with reduced compression.

strathound

[QUOTE=Chazmo,Dec 2 2005, 11:37 AM]Compression test all four cylinders is a definite "must".

mugenrsx

Consistency is what you look for in compression tests. Different tools give a different range of numbers.

Chazmo

If you would like more data, your best bet is to roam over to the Under The Hood forum and look for the info there. Also, I'm pretty sure the service manual has that info, and I'll try to look it up later for you if you can't get the results.

mugen is correct about consistency. That's the idea.

kstokes

With any used car, i'd tell you to look for consistency across the board with the entire car - a clean car with a well kept interior and exterior, wheels that haven't been curbed, full service records - it will give a great indication that the previous owner really cared for it / respected it.