Hello everyone,

I bought my S2000 back in september, and I have noticed since that the back of the car is lower than the front. I must say that the car is 98% stock. 2% = Ap2 wheel, ap2 exhaust tips, little add-on here and here but, otherwise, suspension/engine/transmission everything stock.

SO, Ive got to work on the car since winter is started and noticed that my springs are installed backward. Front spring are = Blue/Orange/Red and Rear spring = Blue/Blue/Red. First of all, they are not even the good spring for the year of my car, refering to this https://robrobinette.com/images/S200...ings_rev1a.pdf

I got 00-01 spring.... this is one thing but the other is, Is there ANY good reason to install spring backward on an S2000 ? Cause if not, its sure im switching this to normal cause the car look stupid like this...

Thank you guys.

 

Looks aside I doubt this car drives or handles well. The rear springs in all but the CRs are stiffer than the fronts and if swapped end for end I'd expect the front to then be higher than the rear as the compression is different.

A quick solution is to just swap the springs to their proper end. They'll look "right" for sure. I would put aside a Saturday and do this. Not a trivial bit of work but well within most of our abilities with some sort of spring compressor and fiddling around the fuel inlet pipe in the trunk. A buddy did this all by himself on jack stands when he replaced "lowering springs" on his '02 with OEM springs we sourced from Ebay. Honda tweaked spring rates every two years but there's no scientific which are "best" and you can mix and match as wanted.

Since you're looking at McCanless article you know you have MY 00-01 springs. The front and rear stabilizers are different between your model year but yours may be the right ones. (See page 6 of the article.)

Expensive adjustable coilovers are often removed when selling a car and I suspect this was done and "springs is springs" took place.

-- Chuck

 

Yes, swapping them back will definitely help. But before you spend the afternoon wrenching, I'd also check to see which shocks you have. The part numbers are shown on the body of the shock (along with the production date, YYMMDD). If they're not '00-'01 shocks, you might want to go ahead and get a set of used OE springs (generally very inexpensive in the marketplace here) that match your shocks.

 

 

 

twohoos, you're like a S2000 encyclopedia. If Disney were to have made a movie about you it might have been titled "The S2000 Reference Guide that wore driving shoes". (I joke with the utmost of respect of course.) I'm curious to know if you've put together any other papers regarding the S2000. If so, where could I find them?

 

 

 

I experimented with mix and match different combinations of springs and swaybars from different years searching for the right front rear balance. At one point I had rear springs from one year on the front, and a different year rear springs on the rear. Neither matched the year of the shocks. My car did not fly off the road in a ball of fire.

All year spring rates are close enough to each other that, for the most part, using mismatched spring to shock isn't going to have damping too far off ideal to matter that much.

If I had to guess what happened to your car, its:

At one point, someone put on lowering springs or did something stupid like cut coils off stock springs. Next owner or used car dealer wanted to put it back to stock, so bought used springs, and didn't know to pay attention to what year. Then they couldn't tell the difference between front and rear, and guessed wrong (at least they didn't get one front on rear and one rear on front, seen that one!)

You should be congratulated for finding this anomaly.

I have a spring swaybar spreadsheet that calculates your front rear static balance of any combination of springs and bars. PM me your email address and I'll send it to you.

You can see what your balance is now with the backwards springs and your stok swaybars (we're guessing those are still stock for your year. Measure bar diameter and compare to twohoos doctorial thesis on suspension to confirm.

Then you can see what your balance would be with those springs and whatever bars you have if you swap them to proper position.

You can compare those with what stock for your year should be.

 

Yes, your right. For sure, my car was dropped at one point in his life. I can see rubbing point on rear bumper and on rubber seal on rear metal lip. I have replaced everything with new parts. I still have the right sway-bars for my 2003. Sending you a pm

Thank you for taking time to give me all this great informations. I appreciate.

Guillaume