jkelley

Wanted to make this thread to say that I am very happy I made the decision to go see Jordan this past Saturday, he is extremely knowledgeable, very honest, and very fairly priced. Also, he put up with all of my stupid questions haha. I left on Friday around 5pm from work to drive to Columbia, SC and had dinner with my wife and then drove to Atlanta and crashed on my in-law's couch for about 3 hours to rest. Then left at 5 am to make to to Jordan's place by around 8:30 am. Total of about 600 miles one way and 9.5 hours of driving.

We started with some diagnostics to confirm my results I had in my own garage (comp+leak down):
#1 - 250
#2 - 250
#3 - 130... uh oh
#4 - 250
Fired up the air compressor and went straight to a leak down test on cylinder 3. Immediately heard air trucking through the exhaust manifold Leakage was around 85-90% lol...

Jordan was nice enough to let me buy a complete head from him with ~10k mi. on it and everything spec'd to the tee (especially since this was pretty short notice). So we headed to his garage and pulled the head.










Pulled the exhaust valve on cylinder #3 and sure enough, burnt to hell:




We checked out lots of other little things but everything seemed in great condition still. Had a couple of bad bearings on some serp belt driven pulleys but he swapped those out pretty quickly no problem. The tensioner had oodles of play and I probably only had a couple hundred miles before it gave out lol.

The bottom end looked fantastic. Carbon buildup was even super low with 75k on the motor, you could even still read the numbers on the piston heads! And the piston clearances were nice and tight which we were both very happy to see. Definitely a healthy motor. Jordan said it must have just been a little carbon that got dislodged from an injector or something and unfortunately pissed off an exhaust valve. Just unlucky.

So he swapped the head with no issues, and checked out a bunch of things along the process and was definitely a person that pays attention to the small details. He was very efficient, confident, and knowledgeable which I think paid off greatly for me. All along the way he was replacing o-rings, gaskets, etc, checked the VTEC screen just in case (no issues there), and definitely did not cut any corners. He was meticulous with scraping away old gasket and any other mating services to ensure no leaks in the future which I really appreciated. Bled the system with some fresh Honda T2 coolant and started her up and it sounded GREAT even on cold start with ECU learn to go, which was awesome. And it still sounds great of course! No CELs, no overheating issues, nothing! I'm confident the motor will go another 100k easy. We even ran the compression on cylinder 3 just to make sure and it came back 250 like a brand new motor again! And it runs like it to.

If you're debating making this trip yourself like I was, I say do it. I'm VERY glad I did. You will not be disappointed. Is prices are extremely fair too and he's NOT one to tell you you need something when you don't. I'm super skeptical about most mechanics in my area but I had complete faith in everything Jordan told me I did or did not need.

I say this was outpatient surgery for my car because Jordan got everyone done in only 1 day! In an out for a full head swap? Yes please! haha.

I will not be hesitating to come back to see Jordan when I do my SOS stage 1 kit in the next ~6 months or so.

Thanks again Jordan!

zeroptzero

Jordan is awesome, the best S2000 tech in the South, lol, at least South of me. I travel 800 miles one way to take advantage of his services. Nothing but good words for Jordan.

sillyboybmxer

nice to hear.
is a burned valved related to one being too tight and nothing more?????

S2KPUDDYDAD

Great to hear, glad you had a positive experience with getting your car sorted out. We have LHT in the Tampa panellus Park area for our S2000 needs. If I don't do the work my self I have John at LHT do it.

I have had guys come from all over even out of state to have me install a rear for them, I am honored that people think that highly of me

What would be great is if we had a thread that had the best, honest, and most reputable mechanics in the US.

jkelley

Well I did a valve adjustment adjustment within 2k mi. of purchasing the car and I didn't find any valves that were too far out of spec. None were out of spec on the loose end (but I think that's because valves generally tighten with mileage). I would think that they would have to have 0 clearance to start really burning. I think this was just a case of some unlucky carbon got flung off from somewhere and did the damage. It was only 1 valve and it was on cylinder 3.

The car actually ran fine even with that low compression and leakage rate. power band was fine, good vtec, etc. I actually just did a compression test 'for funzies' because I wanted to just check for peace of mind. Yea.... I didn't get much sleep after I found the low compression myself lol. Even though, at the time, I didn't realize why it was low. I was running my compressor pressure too low during the leak down so I couldn't hear the air escaping the exhaust port.

zeroptzero

James I remember chatting with you about your engine woes, that burned valve would have been tricky to diagnose. It was a good idea to tear it down and get to the root cause of the problem. Good to hear everything is running again.

MM3Kwolik

James, thanks for the kind words. I'm definitely glad we were able to get you fixed up and running down the road in a day.

A burnt exhaust valve is usually caused by a valve out of spec (too tight), but like I had stated, it's not impossible for something to have gotten lodged in there to prevent the valve from fully closing/sealing, causing the whole surface to get burnt. It's kinda crazy how you can visually see a color difference in the burnt valve in his 3rd picture (6th valve on the bottom from the left).

Again, thanks for the kind words. I look forward to helping you again in the future.