flanders

You can try to get grease in there but it's very difficult to see what you are doing and you don't want to get grease at the wrong place.
I had similar problems and used a bent piece of wire to get the grease in at the right place.
You can check this thread for more information https://www.s2ki.com/forums/s2000-un...lutch-1157540/

cdelena

No, I have no experience working with that and did not really want to. Honda had already replaced shafts and gear sets (tsb and warranty) with no dramatic improvement. When it gave up and just researched what was available from the local salvage firm and was able to pickup a low mileage 2002 transmission for about $550. Put it in myself without problem. I have been told that parts alone to do a full rebuild is more than that.

jflies

Ok so for a quick update, I did grease the everything I could find at the fork/slave cylinder, polished the slave cylinder pivot ball, adjusted the pedal height, bled the system (again), and tried red lining the gears a whole bunch. Pretty much the same.

I did get some new info though (I've only had the car for a month, btw). Shifting from 2nd to 3rd the other day, at about 4500 rpm, I pressed the clutch to the floor, and the revs stayed at 4500 rpm. I got the engine/transmission to disengage by blipping the throttle a bit, but clearly the clutch is sticky. I guess the title of the thread is wrong because it must be the clutch not disengaging. Also, I went to a flat parking lot and experimented shifting from N to 1st with the clutch on the floor. The car nudged forward a bit even while the clutch was depressed.

Ugh I do not want to replace the clutch in my driveway but I'm way too cheap to have a shop do it, so I have a really dumb idea that I want to try first that I want to run by you guys. There are several reasons that the clutch might be sticking, but one of them is a friction disk that fits too tightly between the pressure plate and the flywheel. The car is sort of beat up (salvage title, paint is rough, some maintenance items were a little overdue), so I'm thinking maybe the previous owner installed a cheap or mismatched clutch kit. Should I try to wear down the friction material a bit to get more clearance and possibly less sticking? It would be free (all I'd have to do deliberately drive terribly by slipping the clutch), and what's the worst that can happen? It's either change the clutch now or wear it out and change the clutch...

windhund116

I don't think this is possible. Too thick of a clutch disc would make it hard to reassemble the pressure plate onto the flywheel.

Sorry.

jflies

Yeah... wishful thinking.

So is the clutch replacement doable in a driveway? The diy links I've seen show the car lifted.

cdelena

Many clutch swaps are done on garage floors so I don't see any reason it cannot be done on a good driveway. Since the car must be raised quite a lot and put on heavy duty jack stands to drop the subframe and remove the transmission it is not something you would want to do or leave unattended in some neighborhoods.

jflies

Probably nobody cares but I thought I'd give an update in case anyone else ever has this problem. I drove the car for a few months by carefully rev matching it since the clutch was semi-permanently engaged during a lot of shifts. It was getting worse so I made time to finally drop the transmission and replace the clutch. The problem was that one of the clutch disc spring retainers (the piece of bent metal holding the springs in place) broke off and was floating between the disc and pressure plate. It was rubbing between the two, gouging into them, and keeping the disc coupled to the PP/flywheel. I guess the piece wasn't always wedged between the PP and disc since sometimes the car would shift okay. I think I'll upload a picture of what happened later on.

By the way, replacing an s2000 clutch on the floor is a nightmare. I had 3 subframe bolts and one transmission bolt seize up badly during removal (the trans required rethreading). The front right subframe bolt was so seized up that I could not lower the subframe very much which made removing the transmission difficult. One of the subframe captive nuts broke off inside the frame so I'm permanently one subframe bolt short (anybody got any ideas to fix this?). Then, every single bolt on the driveshaft stripped because someone before me tightened the absolute piss out of them. I had to cut the heads off (I replaced them with regular grade 8 hex head bolts which are a ton easier to work with, by the way). I'm guessing it took 200 ft.lbs. or more to remove the flywheel bolts (double the proper torque)... If everything goes right then maybe it wouldn't be so bad, but when you encounter problems it can be difficult to fix them with such little clearance under the car. Power tools like an impact wrench would have probably also helped...

The car is so enjoyable to drive now.

windhund116

Thanks, for the follow-up. Always helps to know the culprit & final outcome. Was the defective clutch an OEM Honda one or an aftermarket type?

Thanks!

Chuck S

Nice to know it's fixed!

-- Chuck

Billman250

Actually follow ups are very important, and appreciated.

Seen the broken/floating piece of spring cage quite a few times.