Low oil and No Vtec
 

Hello there. This situation doesn't happened with me but i would like to know the trueness of that.

Imagine the follow situation: We accelerate the car and notice no VTEC engaging, we stop the car and when we open the hood the oil cap was lost and lot of oil spill over the motor. We check the oil level on the dip stick and it was at more or less 30% (between L and H). We change oil and filter, clean the motor and everything goes back to normal.

What i want to know is if with 30% of oil we could face issue with VTEC or if we need to be way bellow (below L mark) for no VTEC.

AFAIK, it's oil pressure which is monitored, re: VTEC activation. So whatever level triggers the critically low pressure, I guess.

Any oil level between L and H would give you sufficient oil pressure, so it would not be the cause of not having vtec engage. Was the motor fully warmed, a cold engine will not allow vtec to engage. The old oil cap fell off because the rubber seal was worn out and no longer provided the necessary tension to keep it tight.

Basically my familly bought a s2000 and after 3 days of normal use (no race, track, drag, drift, whatsoever) we have a rod knocking... And this is the b*****t story the previous owner told when we have seen some residual oil around the engine. Since i know a little about Honda engines i have the idea to not have vtec (because of low oil) the level of oil need to be way down to have issues on oil pressure. I just ask you guys about this so i can have some solid information and prove with lawyer that he let the engine run without oil and sell the car knowing the issue and scam us.

Maybe take it to a reliable mechanic who knows the S2000, for a complete checkup? Including compression test and oil pressure test.

:ponder:

Already i've done that and also a compression test and results are a bit low, but since i didn't authorize disassembly the engine there's not much more they can do. If required i will proceed with more tests and disassembly but i don't want to continue beating an engine on those conditions (unless things get nasty with the seller).

I've been just thinking about that story and i just write this post to check with you guys and confirm if with the oil level between L and H we can experience low oil pressure and not engage vtec

We all know the s2k is a very sensitive with oil levels and since the engine discussed is a F20C even more sensitive (for what i've been reading). What i think it happened here is: Car lost oil, a lot of oil and have low pressure, resulting in no vtec engaging and also low pressure for proper rod bearings lubrication. The previous owner notice that and before having noticeable symptons just sells the car. So we bought the car, and i drive it and seems fine... i've put like 500miles just highway at ~65mph (i think i just hit vtec 1 or 2 times) and on the last time i drove the car i just met with a guy, near a auto repair shop, that knows a lot about of s2000 (and has one) to just make a couple of pulls to check if everything is fine (nothing crazy, just a couple of miles) and when i got back to the shop and stop on a stop signal i hear a knocking sound on the engine (at the beginning we think was something else but after closer look was definitly a rod knock) we test the compression and values was a bit low having the #3 cylinder way low than others (~200psi, ~205psi, ~180psi, ~200psi)

This story of loosing oil cap and no vtec was all tolded by the previous owner, now i'm just putting the pieces of the puzzle together and trying to guess what could really happens (based on the story he told)