The expression goes;

"You can always tell the pioneers,....they are the ones with the arrows in their backs."

 

I think it's wise to not be too quick to belittle the so called pioneers. Many things that are now accepted as obvious and natural were once ridiculed. These products are now happily used by sometimes judgemental people that are in this topic called purists. In fact they are only along for the ride and reaping the benefits of the pioneers before them. The first version of a mod is perhaps not so clever but down the road it may have evolved to the accepted standard. I'm sure there was a pioneer a long time ago that was called stupid when he thought up the 9000 RPM road car too.

[grey]--------------------------o0o---------------------------[/grey]

[grey]2000 S2000 - 1998 VFR800 - 2000 Atos[/grey]

 

Even in the Japanese market, the only Honda street cars I know of are the Honda City Turbo and the Honda Legend turbo 2.0L in the first gen Legends. Engine reliability and longevity are the main issues. Additional weight of the system is a secondary issue that may cause a handling tradeoff.

 

By the way, the 1982 Honda CX500 turbo was the FIRST factory turbocharged production motorcycle (I owned one). So Honda took amazing chances and other aspects of the bike are ahead of its time. The turbo lag was awful, making it a handful to ride (twist, wait two seconds, ZOOM). The 1983 CX650 was a much better bike. And the normally aspirated CX engine was originally designed for turbocharging. Honda never did recover the R&D costs and every bike sold cost much more than its price. Hence, no more Honda turbo-bikes.

Some N/A engines ARE designed with future F/I in mind. But I agree our S2K's are not among them. Changing valve overlap, remapping spark, and feeding more fuel are normal issues in the big picture of engine tuning, even for N/A. Anyone looking at a big bore kit?

 

Penforhire,

I don't think a big bore kit will be too likely for this car. The bore spacing is already quite close, meaning relatively thin cylinder walls. Additionally, the FRM cylinder liners cannot be overbored by more than about 0.010", which would give you an equivalent displacement increase of about 10 cc.

You could replace the liners with ductile iron sleeves (very common in the Honda drag racing community), but that might have some longevity issues. Rather, the more common approach to increased displacement will probably be a stroker kit (ala Mugen's 2200 demo). To get a 10% displacement increase will require about 8 mm more stroke. Assuming you can't really move the wrist pin up any further, this will reduce the rod/stroke ratio from about 1.82 to 1.56. Not ideal, but considering that the current Integra Type-R engine only has a rod/stroke ratio of 1.54, it is liveable at engine speeds under 8900 rpm. Moving the wrist pin up a couple mm would net an improvement to about 1.60 which is quite acceptable, if not as good as the original.

UL

 

I think you belittle pioneers by claiming someone just bolting on a supercharger IS one. Maybe the person who INVENTED the supercharger is a pioneer. Soichiro Honda WAS a pioneer. ANYBODY can plunk his or her cash down and "improve" their car and it has nothing to do with being a "pioneer".

A purist (as it is defined here on this forum) is someone who wishes not to defile an automotive work of art. You don't see someone adding body kits or tacky wings to a Ferrari do you? I don't see many people "improving" Boxsters much either. So why do people feel compelled to mess with the S2000? Purity in design such as is found in the S2000 generally can only be corrupted with someone try to improve on it.

Less is sometimes more.

 

To each his own. I enjoy my S2000 a lot more with the supercharger than without and that's all I care about. If you don't like it, don't buy it. It's just a car. Lighten up a little.

 

To you I am sure it is and of course you can do with it what you will as is your right.

To a purist it is the dreams of it's designer distilled into metal and motion.

 

You're putting words in my mouth. I made no such claim in my post. The discussion had already changed to a more general plane, i think it's not about superchargers per se, but rather about people who are not satisfied with "staying at home".

The S2000 is a very well put together package and I don't want to change much either. I cringe when I see some of the available body kits. Still, to me even the S2000 is not the final word in anything, be it design or function. Honda engineers are not gods with the ultimate answer, and they or you can't dictate what's OK for anyone to do with their car.

If you like it the way it is then keep the car in its original form. I just can't understand why you are so disturbed by people who choose to go outside your norm. So what, just let them do their thing. Or is it somehow threatening to your position?

Live and let live.

 

As I said, Lighten up a little.