I am turning over in my head a plan to do a little debt reduction. Part of that plan is to sell my '06 GPW on black and purchase an older S2000.

At what point would a S2000 need to have the engine refreshed/rebuilt? Is there an approximation when the miles are high enough that power output begins to diminish? That is my only real concern about an older, higher mileage S2000. I can pretty much replaced any bushing, fluid, mount, blah blah out there but an engine rebuild could be costly although a swap to a lower mileage used engine might not be too bad. Thoughts?

 

Don't do it!

 

It is hard to pass up dropping $9k in debt.

 

Well Jim Reyenga did get 2nd at Nationals last year and he had a 2000 with 200k miles on it, so....I wouldn't worry about it too much as long as you make sure you get an engine that's in good shape, make sure it has compression, etc.

 

Jim also replaced his rod bearings. I did mine at 122,000 miles and they needed it. Other than rod bearing a ap1 should have no issues with going over 200k. Pictures of my rod bearings are on my www.photobucket.com/josh7owens

 

Hey josh. Did you just do it with the block in the car? Ie didnt even bother cleaning up the crank? Just pulled oil pan and caps and swapped em out? You do the rob bearings too?

 

I didn't do the crank/main bearings because you have to take out the trans. We just did the rod bearings. The rod bearings are the ones known to fail on the ap1. When I rebuild the motor once it reaches 200k or so I'll than replace all the mains. Once the ap1 gets to 100k it needs new rod bearings. Mine wernt bad enough to cause any damage to the crank but a couple of them had cooper showing. We took off the pan, read the numbers so we could order new Honda oem bearings and then put the pan back on. I drove the car for another week and then we spent about 3-4 hours replacing the rod bearings. The pics of them are on my photobucket and also posted somewhere on this site if you search. $115 in part and 4 hours of my time is well worth knowing I have nothing to worry about.

Also the ap1s have the intake side retainer cracking issue so if you buy one used inspect them and then do so every so often. Such as once a year or if you over-rev. The oil squatter issue is also on the early ap1s but we can't legally fix that in str.

I'm at 145k, been autocrossing since 80k and have yet to have any serious issues. Preventive maintence is the name of the game. All my cylinders read 210-220psi when I do compression checks. Healthy car!

Edit- yea we did them in the car. Take the caps off, take out bearings and slide up pistons to allow for cleaning, inspect the crank, slide new bearings in and put the caps back on. You could re-plastic gauge the bearings but since no scaring or damage was done to the crank we just trusted hondas codes to tell you the right sizes

 

Yeah im at 120k miles. Im sorta with you on doing cheap insurance with rod bearings. Retainers as well. I have planned on doing ap2 retainers just havent gotten around to it.

 

interesting. the link is broken, however.

looking forward to seeing this.

darcy

 

I did run 3 autocross runs low on oil but after talking to a local engine builder he doesn't think that 180 seconds worth driving caused the wear. It was over time. Also I guess it was 133k.

https://www.s2ki.com/s2000/topic/850...#entry20335334

Let me know what you think.


Btw ap2 retainers are illegal to put in a ap1 and still be in STR. Sucks but it's true. Keep that in mind, u might want to replace them with ap1s again and just look at them every so often