Hi all. I bought this '06 AP2 last year. It's been an interesting but mixed experience. After my 06 Civic was totaled in 2019, I was looking for an 8th gen Si but found this in August. 80k miles, my favorite color and with a black interior. I couldn't say no to its face when I saw it.

Retrospectively, maybe I should have said no. It has a sketchy history that I uncovered too late. Respray and the front bumper, radiator, and subframe were replaced. Now compression loss at 90k and out of commission until I can get a valve job done. Hoping I won't have to replace the head or engine. Hard lessons learned. I assumed too much about reliability coming from Civics and needed to be more aware of where I was getting work on the car done. Still, 10k miles worth of driving all over SoCal. I want to get it back on the road and keep it there, so here to learn.

It's a stock car aside from Buddy Club N+ coilovers. Plans were to get a different suspension setup, replace the soft top, and get better tires. Plans now are to find someone who actually wants to do the valve job lol.

 

Good luck getting it sorted out. I think we have all purchased a car that gave later headaches. I remember 20 years ago I bought a 1987 Buick Grand National that had a PPI done on it. It had receipts for work done including a transmission refresh. I had to drive it the 4 hour trip home and the transmission gave out 60 miles from home. I had to have it towed to a shop in that city and then lean on a Buick friend in Canada to have a rebuilt transmission shipped there. He was known as the best transmission guy around the turbo Buick community. That was definitely an unexpected expense but the seller did buy me the torque converter.

 

Awesome. Grand Nationals sound like they'd be worth the trouble. One of my dream cars.

Except for a 3.8 Gen Coupe, all the cars in my life have had problems from the start. When I bought that AE86 in the above pictures, it had 7 year old tires, a howling diff, sagging, questionable suspension, caused a minor electrical fire when the sound system was being hooked up, a distributor that was spitting oil on to the exhaust manifold, and trashed Enkei 92 wheels that were barely circular on the inside. Within a few months, the pop-ups stopped working and I needed new wheel bearings. Retrospectively, it was a nightmare compared to the s2k problem. So it could all be worse! Even with the questionable history of the s2k, it tracks straight, the trans is perfect, frame is straight, and it handles well. Fit of the new bumper is almost on point. Paint is ok but has a bit of pitting from the respray. I actually prefer the more purple hue to the respray overall OG Suzuka (or I'm coping).

I did find out that my regular shop will rebuild the head and have done it on several AP2s. A lot of places flat out refused though, but it makes sense after reading why.

 

What happened to the blue seats?

 

Dunno. Bought it with all black interior except for the carpet. Assuming they were traded off by a previous owner. Lucked out with that. Suzuka was my favorite color, but all blue interior was too much for me.

 

Tony at Mid Valley seems to be the only "S2k specialist in LA." He pretty much quoted me 1800 to do a valve job, as he was so quick to assume that was the issue when he checked low compression on #3. Turned out it just needed a valve adjustment.

Have you found any other S2k shops?