robrob

This is a fantastic thread with lots of informed informed opinions.

rbtz

That's fair for sure, when I lived in Michigan, I actually did daily mine every single day on long commutes and did HPDE 1-2 days a year with no serious track-focused modifications at all except pads and fluid, and zero reliability issues period, all on a car with 150k miles. Looking at all of the cars I've listed it seems they all need at least some amount of money thrown at them to be as track ready/reliable as an s2000.

This is the issue, yeah adding a roll bar may be a small compromise to you, but to many people that buy these cars, cutting up the body to install a roll bar is a huge compromise. Then, let's just try ignoring the safety aspect for a moment, the s2000 is definitely not the best daily of the group, others are more practical and definitely more comfortable, so you're already making a compromise there before you even consider what needs to be done to safely track the car.

Then you could also argue whether adding just a roll bar is even really that safe? I've done a lot of research myself trying to figure out what to do and I couldn't find a single place that agreed about a safe option for daily and track duty when discussing roll bars, seats, and harnesses. Don't necessarily want to start up that debate (I think there's actually a recent thread here full of opinions on it), but just stating the safety of that isn't 100%.

This was actually an issue for me, the car I sat in had stock seats with an HD roll bar, and that loss of extra recline forces me to click the seat forward slightly, which kills my leg room and pushes my knees against the steering wheel. I'm not absurdly tall either, at 6'3, but meh, maybe I'm just poorly proportioned for an s2000 and this is more of a personal issue. The answer for me seemed to be more-so finding a seat that allows me to use the stock 3-point safely still.


Truly this all does come down to compromises, I think the best option is always to have a second car as a daily to rack up your miles on and make life easier when you need to work on your hpde car, and in that world the S2000, in my opinion would be the best car to be used as an HPDE car with light DD duty for the money, take away the DD and for sure I'd look into an SRF or something. I just think the compromises are a bit much for it to beat other options as a full time daily and HPDE car. Some may disagree, obviously, but I think for most people this will be the case.

roddyc

Touching very quickly on the 987 Cayman S, as someone who previously owned one, I would stay away from the 987.1 (06-08) if you plan to do any kind of tracking at all; its a fantastic street and weekend car though. As mentioned, IMS is pretty much a non-issue, but oil starvation issues under sustained g's are well known and not cheap to address correctly (plenty of people with blown motors who have a deep sump and baffle). And the Porsche tax for parts is just ridiculous; as an example: the stock AOS also gets overwhelmed on the track and allows a lot of blowby, the "fix" is a $2K AOS made by Porsche Motorsports. You can find nice 987.1's for less than $25K now, but just keep in mind that a new used motor will run around $15K and there are no easy options in terms of motor swaps either. The 987.2 doesn't have any of these oiling issues and can be run on the track as is, but pricing has held up pretty well and supply is limited since they were made in lower volumes.

I'm not dailying my S2000, but for HPDE's and street driving to and from the track, I could not be more happy with it. I'm in it (including mods) for about half of what I sold my Cayman for and am not constantly worried about whether or not I'm going to make the drive back from the track.

rbtz

Are you saying you're not worried about reliability in comparison to your experience with the Cayman, or just in general? Just curious as someone that's looking into one of these as an option.

roddyc

In general I suppose; I wasn't constantly worried with the Cayman, but in the back of my mind, I knew that on the slim chance I had a catastrophic failure, it would be a substantial amount of money to get the car right again. I'd have small things happen on the track like a broken end link or a coolant leak and the anxiety of "what's wrong with my car and how much is this going to cost me" would set in. I'm well aware that S2000's are not immune to failures on the track, but the probability of them occurring and, particularly the financial consequences, are magnitudes lower.

DavidNJ

If driving hard, isn't the risk of wrecking on the track greater? In F1, with the best drivers in the world, cars are wrecked every event. Even my World Champions. In LMP, DTM, etc where the races are longer and driving should be more conservative the wrecks still occur.

In track day/HPDE events that don't have rules and theoretically aren't timed, or even NASA where the cars are classed by wt/hp ratio and theoretically and engine should be stressed that hard, should mechanical failure be the main risk? Wouldn't twisting a Cayman chassis be more expensive than blowing a hole in the side of the engine?

lookstoomuch

Hmm, it would be interesting to see some real statistics on this for sure, i.e. mechanical failure vs. losses due to wrecks. It would depend on the track too, i.e. Road America is not friendly and the "kink" tends to eat a couple of cars per weekend where Gingerman is much more friendly of off track excursions so would wager there's more mechanical failures there vs. wrecks. Then there's wrecks caused by mechanical failures.

However....in the case of a Cayman I'd wager a twisted up Cayman with a good engine is worth more than an intact Cayman with a blown engine due to the cost of a engine rebuild being close to the cost of buying another used Cayman.

sleepycivichb

Has anyone thought of K swapping a FD3S? I'm curious to see what S2k guys think compared to their daily duty track cars to a K24 swapped FD3S as in power to weight, handling, ect..

rbtz

Boy I miss Gingerman, such a great track...

You also gotta consider track insurance right? If I have track insurance, and I wreck, whether it be an s2k or a cayman, I'd assume the deductible and rate would be pretty dang close.