...agree with most of the comments above. The way I've seen cars driven away by valets....them not being able to open your doors should be the least of your worries. Self Park.

 

i agree with all of the comments above, as i used to valet too, back in college. i never had a problem with cars, but i knew more about cars then the average valet. door handles, start buttons, all the little tricks, etc. i knew/learned about. but a lot of valets dont know much about cars and just do the job for the money. and yes some do beat on the cars, although i never really did cause im not a prick. tipping nicely on the way in does help too, but u shouldnt have to do that in order to have ur car not abused. i personally rather self park my s2k unless im giving the valet $20 to keep it up front.

 

well check this out...this l33t cisco networking guy that comes in and does all of our routers and hardcore firewalls at my work(bank)..he owns an 06 STI...from what he says he was able to hook his comp up to the ECU and with some software change a lot of stuff..including what i thought was the coolest thing ever..

he has a "valet mode" programmed into his ecu..i dunno how he activates it(i don't think he would hook his comp up to his car every time) but when its in effect the turbo is literally turned off(wastegate wide open??) and if the driver of the car goes above 2000 rpm's the engine shuts off....literally just turns off right away. i've never seen it in action but i believe him 150% he's completely honest and has never tried to exaggerate anything. he's tuned the car basically by himself..raised the boost, changed timing, cleaned up the A/F ratio, its pretty serious.

anyway...is there anyway to set something like this up on an aftermarket ECU? AEM? most likely it would be a full stand alone...but do they have features like this?

anyway...NEVER EVER EVER LET ANYONE valet your car...here's my story..i bought some winter tires off tire rack and got htem sent to an unnamed tire shop. its a decent franchise shop but i'm not gonna name it because i'm not like that. anyway this "young kid" who was "bored at work" and was "having a bad day" was chosen to put the tires on and give my car an alignment. halfway through the work this kids girlfriend(fat nasty girl if you ask me) came in and was talking with him for the rest of the time. so i guess he thought the s2000 was like any other honda and was getting frustrated with the car trying to get it in spec. that and he prob wanted to impress his fat nasty girlfriend...so after he got done he took my car off the lift backed it up..reved in first gear and dumped the clutch while i'm watching in the f'in window!!!!! he f'in peeled out for like 30 feet with my f'in winter tires from inside the building to outside it!!! i ran out to the front desk and FLIPPED THE F OUT HARDCORE#$%#@$^ seriously yelling at everyone. the kid at the desk was mad cool and was like "holy crap dood i heard that i'm so sorry please don't think we're all like that i'm gonna go tell the manager but i want you to call him too just to make sure he believes me" so the kid walks in after parking my car up front and i got right in his face askin "wtf do you think your doing, thats not your car to be doing shit with wtf were you thinkin?!?! i wouldn't care???!?!" and the kid was like "oh my foot slipped off the clutch"...i almost dropped him right here..but instead i just ripped him a new one. anyway i left fuming ok...so i get to my girlfriends house and look at the tires and there's like 5 inch truck valve stems on the tires?!?!?! WTMF seriously now?!? so anyway i drive back to my house with my summer tires with my girl and half way there the manager of the store calls me and starts kissing mad ass trying to do everything to make it up. the kid got written up and the manager told me he'd replace the valve stems with chrome ones for free..and that the only person that will touch my car is the lead mechanic of the shop. so i took it back and the lead guy was really awesome...older dood that actually knew wtf he was doing. he gave my car a perfect alignment and replaced the valve stems with the chrome ones all for free. we started talking and he said he just did an s2000 fully stripped race car the other week...turns out the car belonged to JFO a member of my local forum .

moral of the story.....DO WORK YOURSELF...BUY TOOLS NOT LABOR...and if there's something you can't do...MAKE SURE YOU TAKE IT TO A GOOD PLACE no dealers, no shit huts...and see if you can watch them/help out while they do it.. heh don't trust anyone. i had the car for 3 weeks when this tire crap happened.. also got rear ended (slight scratch) after like 10 days of ownership.... nothing else at this point thank god...sorry for the long post

 

i dont get it. theres nothing special about the door handle.

 

The S2000's "cramped" interior doesn't bode well to the general population. I'm sure the same can be said for other similar cars like the Z3/Z4, Miata, Elise, etc. Also add the fact that the placement of the door handle and even the ignition are somewhat discrete compared to other cars. It's all just a matter of adapting.

 

He pushed the start button while the motor was running with the clutch in

 

Go outside and time yourself standing next to your car for 45 seconds... 45 seconds just standing there...

Now imagine yourself standing there for 45 seconds watching someone fumble around inside your car trying to get out and during that 45 seconds hearing that person grind your starter and then tell us you wouldn't feel the same was as the OP...

 

Modifry's redline shift beeper has a valet feature. It's not at all like modifying the ECU, but it's still a nice little feature.

Essentially it allows you to add another alarm that will sound if the RPMs are revved above a desired limit. There may be other things you could do with that signal if you're electronically crafty.

Check it out here.

 

i dont think our door handle is that hard to find in the day time, but at night in the dark it is a little harder. passengers in my car have trouble finding it. there are definitly cars with harder handles to find, like older volvos that have a knob that u slide back and this is hidden in a 'pocket' in the door. its hard to explain, but im sure someone on here knows what im talking about.

unless you are going to a nice restaurant, dont valet if you dont have to.
at all of the catering halls, clubs, malls and cheap places, they dont exactly put the best valets there. basically crowded places with a lot of valets are the worst places. smaller places, such as expensive restaurants, usually have the better, more experienced valets that take care of customers cars. this is in general and not true all of the time, but from my 2 yrs of valeting experience back in college this was true 99% of the time.

 

Darn...I have heard of "valet mode" on another car and can't remember which one it was....