I never had a rear wheel drive car; I could get a real good deal on a brand new 05 without any stability control. Question is how "hairy" really is the handling on an 05 s2000 in the wet during normal everyday driving? Do you always have to be on the lookout for possible tail snapping? Should I just wait for an 06?

I do a lot of karting; I know how is it to drift and put the tail out, but I don't want to be constantly worry about rainy days. If any one has an insightful description on the wet handling traits of the 05 s2000, please share it.

Thanks

 

I've been using my s2k as a daily driver ever since I bought it. the only day I didn't use it was a nasty cold rainy day. I find that my rodeo skids more than then honda.

 

I use my MY05 as a daily driver and have zero problems driving in the rain, no matter how servere the downpour, with the stock tires. This is also my first real wheel drive vehicle and was also a bit leary initially of wet road conditions. Besides, you don't want to buy an MY06 with the drive by wire throttle control system do you?

 

no problems in the rain....regardless i'd still get the MY06.

 

I had a 2003 but had no problems in the rain till I had some miles on the tires. I don't know much about the new tires rain performance but it has sparked some interesting debates on this forum. I would suspect under 10k miles it is probably fine, but over 10k miles you really need to be careful in a hard rain. At about 15k you better have checked your life insurance policies.

Some here have said they autocross with 15k on the original tires in the rain. I would be cautious believing it...

 

I have never had a problem with the stability of my 05 S2K. The 05 is a wonderfully stable car and is a know quantity. Depending upon the implementation of the stability control and throttle-by-wire in the 06, I might prefer it or not. Right now, the only things that I prefer about the 06 over the 05 are the outside temperature gage and the new speakers, although I don't like it enough to pay even $100 more for these options. The handling features of the 06 are currently unknown and may be better, worse or similar to the 05. I think the Honda engineers are pretty sharp, but I'll need to drive the 06 to evaluate whether the new technology makes a great handling car better, worse or indifferent. Having said that, I would trade my 05 for a brand new 06 in a heartbeat.

 

I have an 04 (same as 05) and have been through a set of rear tires already. The car performed great in the rain while the rears had sufficient tread. However, once the "water mover" tread pattern in the RE050's had mostly worn away on the rears, things got hairy. The car started following the ruts on the interstate when it was raining, making it feel very skittish. I had to slow down to around 45 mph once the rears were really worn, and even then, it was still a white-knuckle experience. (Keep in mind, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with the car. I just needed new tires.)

Anyway, I don't know if the 06 VSA system would help with this (following the ruts). This is mostly attributable to having a light RWD car with wide rear tires and fairly aggressive factory alignment settings. VSA won't change any of that.

I've never had a problem with the tail coming out during rainy driving, but then again I always slow down and stay out of VTEC.

So, my summary of 04-05 wet handling would be:
- Fine in city driving. Just don't drive like it's dry.
- Hairy for interstate driving once the tread gets worn down. But VSA might not help this.

So, I don't see a very strong case for getting a more expensive 06 just for wet handling. If you're that worried about it, you always have the option of getting tires that have better tread life and better wet handling (but you will be sacrificing dry handling).

 

[QUOTE=UNC04SuzukaBlue,Oct 28 2005, 02:59 PM]I have an 04 (same as 05) and have been through a set of rear tires already. The car performed great in the rain while the rears had sufficient tread. However, once the "water mover" tread pattern in the RE050's had mostly worn away on the rears, things got hairy. The car started following the ruts on the interstate when it was raining, making it feel very skittish. I had to slow down to around 45 mph once the rears were really worn, and even then, it was still a white-knuckle experience. (Keep in mind, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with the car. I just needed new tires.)

 

It all depeds on the kind of tires you have on your car.
BTW VTEC and RAIN never a good thing.

 

I agree, but we still get all of these threads about having trouble in the rain, and it generally turns out that they had bald tires and/or were pushing it too hard for the conditions.

So, it should be obvious, but apparently it's not.

And, the S2000 does follow truck ruts on the interstate more than other cars I've owned (again, light RWD car with wide rear tires and toe-in in the rear vs. the heavier FWD cars with skinny tires and less aggressive alignments that many of us are more used to driving). So, that characteristic doesn't apply equally to any car, IMO.