tremonti

UPDATE:
I bought a compression tester from Amazon and performed the test today (with some drama). I am very relieved and very surprised.

Here is how it went...I warmed-up the car and removed the spark plugs. The spark plugs looked used, but good. There was no oil and all of them looked about the same. See the picture.

I tested each cylinder for compression three times to make sure I got consistency:

• Cylinder #1 read 215 psi on average. It wasn't anywhere close to 240 psi, but at least it wasn't below 200 psi.
• Cylinder #2 read consistently between 235-240 psi. Now I got a bit worried, because that probably meant that cylinder #1 could be going bad.
• Cylinders #3 and #4 also read consistently between 235-240 psi. At this point, I am a bit bummed, thinking there is definitely something going on with cylinder #1.
• I decide to re-do my test on cylinder #1, and to my surprise it now read consistently between 235-240 psi. See picture.
• Not knowing what to trust, I repeated the test twice for each cylinder (#1 included) and got the same results. I did not get any readings below ~235 psi.

How is this possible? I am thinking that maybe I did not have the tester's hose tight enough into the spark plug's hole, therefore leaking some of the compressed air. Or for some reason the gauge was having issues during its first use right out of the package. What do you think?

To be honest, I was expecting very low readings, due to the car being turbo previously with 500+ HP. I am pleasantly surprised. Am I missing something? I ordered some bent feeler gauges and a valve adjuster. Should be arriving on Saturday. My plan is to check the valves on Sunday.

rpg51

Those numbers look fine. Seems to me that unless the car is performing badly in some way, and/or your are seriously considering unwinding the transaction, you should just drive it and maintain it.

Enjoy.

Car Analogy

Gauge can read low if it cracked slow for any reason, like low battery. Or if the throttle wasn't fully open, that sort of thing.

tremonti

Capital region

Fokker

As long as the lowest is within 28 psi of the highest, you should be fine. The numbers look fine even with a 215 on #1.

TsukubaCody

I mean as long as the previous owner didn't abuse the car & had it tuned well, there's no reason it shouldn't be fine.

This is proof.

NNY S2k

Stop by here sometime:https://www.s2ki.com/forums/new-york...000-owners-67/ Maybe we'll meet up sometime.
Levi

tremonti

I ended up doing the valve adjustment today. Everything looked pretty good under the cover (cams, valve retainers, etc.). The valves were all within tolerance, but mostly towards the higher end (bigger gap). I adjusted a lot of them to the middle of the tolerance. After I was done, there was really no difference on how it idles, but I least I know they are right.

Once the Spring comes, I was thinking of doing Seafoam and then changing the spark plugs along with all the fluids. Does anyone have anything good or bad to say about doing Seafoam on an S2000?

Orjinal

What are you hoping to accomplish with seafoam?

JasonMG

Seafoam is weird. On the Jeep forum, you can have two very well respected, accomplished mechanics 100% disagree on the stuff, for dozens of posts. Both people able to cite evidence that it works and evidence that it's snake oil.