Hope someone can shed some light on this. I have a '00 S2000 with 75,000 miles. Generally, I drive moderatley hard, but the car is well-maintained, Mobil 1 changed regularly, etc.

This weekend on a tour of the Texas Hill Country I was executing a high speed pass when the engine shut down, very similar in feel as when it fails to go into VTEC for lack of oil pressure. I pulled over, checked for leaks, and restarted the car. Lots of engine noise. I limped the car into a local dealer, who pulled a P1250 "VTEC system failure" code, and reported: "a lot of valve noise and bottom end noise".

That dealer and my home dealer both advised driving the car back to Dallas "as gently as possible", which I did. It is now at my home dealer being diagnosed. Engine sounds horrible when at low rpm or under load in first gear, especially when cold. Low grinding/rumbling kind of noise.

Any ideas what could have happened?

Thanks in advance,

Paul

 

Sorry, I don't have any idea...but I'll bump your thread.

 

Ok, the dealer has called with the preliminary diagnosis. Cylinder #1 is down on compression by 30% and has heavy deposits on the spark plud. Dealer wants 5 hours to pull the head and figure out what is reallt wrong. Dealer say 80% likely will need new engine, quoting $6700 for parts and $1900 for labor. 20% likely it is something cheaper, in the $1000 to $3000 range.

Any thoughts or advice?

Thanks,

Paul

 

Wow, that sucks man. I'm not really knowledgable when it comes to technical stuff like that, but if the cylinder is down on compression, it sounds like something is cracked. Did you get all the recalls and TSB's done that might have anything to do with it. The only thing I can think of is the spark plug recall.

BTW, dealers try to jack up prices every now and then and make up problems. I had a similar incident with my last car and it turned out the plug wires were bad. If you have heavy deposits on your plug, maybe it's fouled out due to a faulty plug wire. Second, if there really is something cracked or broken inside, there would be a good chance you would have seen blue smoke coming out your exhaust. Did you notice any of that?

 

Does your insurance cover any of that? That's going to be a hell of an expensive repair.

 

I think you might get this question answered a little better if you put it in under the hood.

 

Thanks for the insights. Yes, all TSBs have been done. No, insurance does not cover it. No, there was no blue smoke. Yes, I will ask about the plug wire, but that doesn't explain the loss of compression...and thanks for the tip about "under the hood".

Paul

 

All -

I thought perhaps you would like to know the outcome of the engine problems, and the solution.

At some point many miles ago, the main bearings started to disintegrate, most probably due to poor oiling, the origins of which we do not know.

Over time, flakes of metal came off the main bearings and settled into the oil pan. Under hard acceleration, such as when the final failure occurred, the metal flakes were sucked up towards the metal screen that protects the oil uptake, and blocked that screen, causing a drop in oil pressure. This occurred the last time while I was passing a car at high speed (90mph). Sensing low oil pressure, the computer shut down the engine.

Upon disassembling the engine, we saw the damage to the main bearings and the metal flakes. In addition, there was scoring along the #1 and #2 cylinder walls, probably due either to metal flakes or misaligned main bearings causing the pistons to move wrongly.

There appeared also to be heat damage to the head.

The dealer estimated $8700 for parts and labor for a complete new bottom end and top end. But Honda would only comp the dealer for 25% of the bottom end work, since it did not believe there was material damage to the top end.

So the dealer wanted me to pay for 100% of the top end and 75% of the bottom end work.

My position was that: 1) I had been reporting abnormally high oil consumption for some 20k miles but the dealer had failed to check into it, 2) about 5000 miles ago, during a routine oil change, the dealer had left a new oil filter untightened and the car lost much oil (although I dumped in several quarts to get it back to them), c) the dealer had advised me to drive the car back from San Antonio after the major failure, which was not good advice.

Given these three things, I felt the dealer should take much more responsibility. Ultimately, we settled on doing both the bottom and top ends, and we would split the total cost (labor and parts) 50/50. My share therefore would be $4,350.

The repair was completed in less than a week, and the car reportedly "test driven" by the both tech and the service advisor. When I came to pick it up, there was clearly a vibration at moderate speeds (above 35mph) when you backed off the throttle. The tech then drove it with me as passenger, and immediately detected the same thing. This was diagnosed as TSB 02-063, inboard CV joint housing damaged.

This presented a problem. The vibration did not exist prior to bringing the car in for the engine problem. Yet there was no reasonable way we could imagine the dealer causing the problem. So we agreed to split this 50/50 as well.

The repairs were completed in the next two days, and the car has been in my possession for about a week (250 miles).

It seems to be running just fine, although I am treating it like a new engine and not putting much stress on it, nor VTEC-ing it (save for once carefully, to make sure it would go into VTEC).

The engine is much smoother and quieter than it has been for a long time. It is hard to understand how the same tech could have worked on this car for so long and never noticed a problem with the engine. As for myself, I should have pressed the issue harder over the last 20k miles or so, but to be honest the degradation occurred so slowly that I was less than completely conscious of it.

Having just put in a new clutch prior to this problem, and Honda providing a new top a few months ago, the only remaining portion of the car that is not rebuilt is the tranny and the rear end. Knock on wood, all run just fine now, and I hope to get many miles of good use out of the car.

Thanks to all - you know who you are - for your helpful insight and advice.

Paul

 

I am AMAZED the dealership told you to drive it after they pulled that CEL code from your car.

 

I would of fought harder to make the dealer pay for the whole motor/labor since they did not tighten the filter all the way. That alone warrants a whole new motor if the original one blew which it did.