Hey,

I have a new '02 Silver Black S2000. I have just got it above the dealer specified 600 mile break in (all within a week of having it . At any rate I have started flirting with the VTEC range and sometimes I notice a strong kick in at around 6200 RPMs and sometimes I cannot tell if it is working at all. Has anyone else had similar results??? At this point I have about 800 miles on the car and I realize that it is nowhere near broken in, but it will be going in for the 1000 mile check soon and I need to make sure that I don't have to ask about the VTEC. Also, I have noticed when the car is cold and I put in the clutch when coming to a stop, the car idles down almost too far and seems to nearly stall itself before the idle jumps back up to about 1000. Anyone else seen this?

Thanks,
Nix

 

If you are slowly accelerating you may not notice VTEC. Under hard acceleration is when VTEC Kicks, very hard to miss it.

Don't try to VTEC until the car has warmed up, 3 bars on the temperature gauge!

When it is hot ( 90+ degrees ) out and I've been driving in-town for a long time, my car will do the same thing. It always corrects itself.

 

Ya, heat will sometimes inhibit VTEC, I've noticed. Also make sure you're oil is up to mark. S2Ks, I've read, lose upwards to a quart of oil during break-in period and the car won't VTEC if it's oil pressure is low. To my understanding, the car is set up so that it will only VTEC if the conditions are right to do so. My guess is this is the engineers way of protecting it from the much-greater stresses incurred by VTEC.

 

If your car appears to stall when idle, you can do 2 things to help:

A- disconnect the fuse to the ECU to reset it OR disconnect the battery cables to reset it
B- Start the car and allow it to stall or do your best to make it stall

The ECU learns some of its settings and during a change of season, resetting them may help lower idle or increase idle. When the car dies, the computer learns to idle a bit higher. Typically, going from winter to summer, I reset the computer to lower the idle in warmer weather. When winter comes, I let it die and after that, it never stalls again.

As they said, make sure your oil is full. And push it all the way to the floor when you want to notice VTEC.

-B

 

Not only that, but just as important is to wait for the transmission to warm up too! That means 6 or 7 minutes of driving/shifting at less than wide-open throttle and less than redline.