Welcome, unforgiven!

Greetings from New England! Enjoy your new baby (well, perhaps "toddler" is more apt)!

 

Hello from Greenville and welcome, Unforgiven. Congrats on your new car.

If you haven't done it yet, be sure to check out the Carolinas regional board.

 

There are plenty of happy S2000 owners who wouldn't ordinarily be considered "enthusiasts." You don't have to drive the snot out of the car to enjoy it, nor wind it out to 9,000 rpm's at every opportunity. I would bet there are some S2000's whose owners rarely push the car to redline but are content to drive in a stylish two seater when the weather calls for it...those who find it an appropriate tool for just cruising down the strip or beach.
Obviously, I'm not one of them but they exist. They have just as much right to tool around in their S2000 as I do firing up mine.
Labels are for soup cans, not automobiles.
And contrary to what others think, the car does not need $200 tires to be enjoyed. Good grief, how pretencious can we get?

 

Maybe a test drive would be appropriate.

 

well stated, i use mine on track days, and enjoy just driveing on a sunny day, its as docile as a civic if you want it to be , its quiet, rides alot smoother than my 04 sti and looks awesome

 

I think the problem(if you want to call it that) is that the S2000 generates most of it's HP within a few hundred revs of red line.

Consequently, it is necessary to shift the car at close to redline to discover what the car is really about.

To many people, including myself, shifting at 8-9000 rpm's is strange, odd, uneasy, or any way you care to describe it. At the very least, it requires some getting used to.

I grew up on American V8's, which generated tremendous torque and HP at very low RPM's. If you redlined these engines for any length of time, engine parts would start falling off. I have this in mind everytime I rev to 8000 rpms.

The S2000 engine is the antithesis of these high torque beasts, and it just requires some rethinking of your driving style.

Now, if we are to believe, what seems to be the prevailing thought that this engine can rev and rev and rev, it will make it easier to get more bang for our buck.

But on the other hand, it we are to believe that the engine can't handle the additional revs, as evidenced by the seemingly large amount of engine failure incidence(bent valves, piston scoring, #4 piston failure), then maybe the car can not be driven at it's limits, therefore rendering it down a notch to highway cruiser.

I tend to drive the car well under it's limits, so I guess I'm not getting everything out of the car, but, I just can't bring myself to be shifting at redline, and everytime another short block topic is opened, I tend to drive even more conservatively.

 

SJ, I've seen no correlation with #4 piston failures and high revs. Barry WY had his go at something like 700 miles, and I don't think he'd ever really stressed it. It might be true, but I'm not convinced.

As for bent valves... Dude, that's a bad downshift. You could do this in any car, but yeah... With the S2000 engine screaming away, perhaps it's a tad easier to make that mistake. If you tend to worry about this, I'd just avoid downshifting. No problem.

On the one hand, I'm sorry to hear that what you've read around here is limiting your enjoyment of the car. I blast my car to redline two or three times a week, and use VTEC almost daily. But, on the other hand, as Russ said, drive it as you like.