S2KI Honda S2000 Forums - Laskey Racing Engines Poor Performer

The S2000 crowd’s engine options have changed recently. We can no longer buy a replacement short block or long block from the factory. We can still buy all the parts but someone is going to have to assemble the engine. This means we have to rely on US engine builders to continue to have the reliable performance we all enjoy in our factory built units, and no after-market builder that I’m aware of warrantees their work without making you pay for this type of engine. The following discusses the poor performance of Laskey Racing Engines in the Los Angeles area. This is not meant to be sour grapes just information for those looking for engine work and don’t want to go through what I did.
I had the need to redo the engine in my track only S2000 in 2013 because it had significant blow-by (during tear down found 1 broken compression ring in each of 2 cylinders). I’m pretty new to the S2000 community and did not have too many contacts for engine work. Many of the local trackers said not to rebuild, buy a used or new engine from Honda because most people were not capable of properly rebuilding the F20 or F22 engine. I did a bit of calling around and thought I found an engine builder that specialized in Hondas and had a lot of experience with the F20/F22, that was Laskey Racing Engines.
We went through the complete tear-down and block sleeving process (Benson installed cast iron sleeves), along with surfacing the block deck flat. Put larger pistons in to make a true 2.2 liter displacement, did the complete head work with updated springs and skimming the head to make sure it was flat, and upgraded rods so I could turn it reliably 8400 rpm. I decided to keep the stock cams, intake and exhaust systems since I was getting advice from others that the gains here were small. Laskey is primarily the assembly part of the build; he relies on others to do the machine work. Not a bad situation if his partners know what they are doing and he checks the work prior to and during assembly. I put the engine back in the car and had a well-known local tuner tune with a new Series II AEM unit. The engine ran pretty well for two track weekends before I started having trouble with overheating during the 3rd weekend. I thought the main cause was that I had narrowed the radiator opening and was still using the OEM radiator, so I put the opening back to stock. Still had trouble with cooling on the 4th track weekend. Ended up finding water leaking into the front two cylinders. This means that during engine operation cylinder gases were being pumped into the water system. Once the pressure in the water system builds up enough the gas is released by the radiator cap and reduces the cooling capacity of the water.
The following summarizes my findings of the Laskey build when working with a different engine builder:

• The front rod bearing had a very bad wear pattern after only the equivalent of 3 track weekends. The bearing clearance was too tight. The rest of the rods and the mains had basically no wear. The upgraded rods are Carrillo units with high strength fasteners.
• The timing cover where it bolts up with the head on the front was sitting 0,005” above the block deck. Our timing covers are dowel pinned into the block so there is no slop when it is bolted to the block. This implies the timing cover was not installed during the machining flat of the block or everything would be on the same plane. This is probably the reason for the head gasket failure. The factory wants to see the block and head flat to within 0.001” to 0.0015”
• All the torque to yield bolts from the engine I provided Laskey were reused. At the time I did not realize the head bolts and main caps bolts were torque to yield. For a racing application the torque to yield bolts should not be reused, it is not really recommended for a standard rebuild.
• A 0.060” thick head gasket was used instead of something like the 0.030” thick gasket the factory uses. The F20/F22 engines use a head design called Pent-Roof Combustion. Our stock pistons and heads are designed to protrude above the block deck by a certain amount to produce what is typically called Squish. The clearance of a section of the piston at the outer diameter region is designed to come within something like 0.045” of the head in this region to generate significant movement of the air/fuel mixture in the chamber during the ignition process. Squish behavior done properly is known to reduce the tendency of the combustion to pre-ignite. The F1 teams go as far as to machine each piston/chamber combination individually to achieve the desired results. Did any of you wonder how we could have 11:1 compression ratio and still only be able to run 91 Octane gas, this is one of the reasons. The use of a 0.060” head gasket will greatly reduce the squish impact and reduce the compression ratio of the engine.
• The true final straw of Laskey’s assembly for me was neglecting to machine the head such that the larger diameter piston did not come into contact with the head. If you put in larger diameter pistons you must go back and machine out a small section of the head so you get the right squish clearance. When I heard about this I’m guessing this is why Laskey installed a 0.060” thick head gasket. Prior to further machining the heads for the larger diameter piston the piston came in contact with the head when a 0.030 head gasket was used.

You can judge for yourself after reading this story whether Laskey is a good engine builder.