Must be the whole n/a thing.

 

I was instructing in a turbo S2000 a couple of weeks ago and my student's oil temp was hitting 300 degrees F (at 70 outside air temp) but his water temp only went one bar over the normally rock solid middle bar on the stock gauge. So the stock radiator is fine, even for boosted S's, but an oil cooler is a good idea for a N/A car and should be mandatory for boosted cars.

If you track your car you should run a good full synthetic oil because of the high oil temp.

 

I am curious about the valve retainers. My stock 03 is just a track car, has 60k miles an stock retainers. Replace them with stock or something better?

 

Where can you get them for this price? Link?

 

Replace your retainers with the current version for the 2.2L engine. They're beefier and less prone to crack.

 

Speaking of oil, I'm finally ready to track my car next summer. Have 65K on the clock, is it too late to switch to synthetic?

 

You'll be fine.

 

Use synthetic.

 

I'm not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but replace the 4 oil jet banjo bolts with the new ones (if you track an AP1 with an engine code that was before a certain one). I've read that they offer 30% more oil flow, which seems like a must, considering that you may already be lacking oil if you don't have a baffled oil pan. The old banjo bolts have 2 holes vs the 4 on the new ones. I don't remember the engine code that they started implementing the upgraded banjo bolts.

 

Curious about how long the stock rear diff and rear wheel bearings/hub lasted peepz here who have had them replaced? Like in terms of track mileage and total daily driven mileage, if any. Also interested to know if anyone had problems with their wheel studs cuz earlier this year my friend broke 2 wheel studs, but he runs the track with full race slicks which have insane grip levels that give a higher rate of wear and tear on other parts. I'm starting to think about these items given that we will still be tracking the car regularly. My car's a MY08 AP2(went thru bolt-ons and then eventually on ITBs) and we run mainly Bridgestone RE55S at the Sepang Intl Circuit(5.543km/lap).

I'm another on stock brakes setup and braking power is not a worry with the right pads, but rather the heat dissipation capability of our stock brakes. I'm starting to wonder if my front calipers need replacement soon. Besides changing brake lines, fluid, pads, front rotors once, we haven't replaced anything else in the brake system. Recently my friend jammed his front brake piston at the track after a number of sessions which I dun think is more than the number of laps I've done on the same track. Stock front rotors lasted me a pretty long time running on DS2500, track mileage of prolly ~1100kms and total mileage of 30000+kms, similarly for the stock clutch. Currently been using Acre 1pc slotted front rotors for about 15000kms, with like 500km track mileage, but these got worn a fair bit by a set of front DS3000 brake pads.

I have about ~1600km+ of total track mileage now with an overall mileage of 46000km and many wear & tear items are starting to creep into my head. Not to mention each track session requires a total of 660km highway mileage 2way too.

Agree on the oil cooler and that was something we have been running from the beginning, as well as a baffled oil pan that came not too long later. Regular oil changes were also done, prolly earlier than needed all the time.

Stock radiator works perfectly fine. Only did some modification to the stock thermostat(after the j's racing screwed up in <6mths), use a mugen fanswitch(j's racing fanswitch failed once again in <10mths) and billion type PG+ coolant. Given that ambient and track temps are always hot at where we track(ambient temps are usually 30-36degC), the car only sees max oil temp between 101degC and 106degC, and max water temp between 93-98degC. I'm thinking of lowering transmission and diff temps though, anyone care to share inputs on that n wot methods work the best?

Used to track a modified/lightened 600bhp GTR32, and I have to say that the s2k is considerably low-maintainence if u had to compare with turbos.