Haven't been logged on lately, but I thought some one might be interested in hearing about my last problem. I'm driving to work on the freeway, no problems noticed with performance, I get in the parking lot turn down the radio and I hear some serious noise under the hood. Leave the motor running and open the hood, the car sounds like it has a diesel engine. I rev the motor and about 3,000 RPM every thing sounds normal. Drove the car home and the noise seems a little louder, but still NO noticeable performance issue. I finally got around to taking the car in to Honda on a flat bed truck. I have an extended warrantee and 48,000 miles on my '02. The dealer calls me the next day and says its being put back together, the problem was both the cam gear bolts had come loose and backed out some what. The bolt on the exhaust cam backed out enough apparently to rub on some thing and sheared the bolt head completely off. Every thing including the bolt shavings stayed on top of the head in an available oil pool. The noise stopped apparently from the cam gears own centrifugal force when above 3,000 RPM and the gears stopped wobbling. The oil filter was removed and cut open and oil drained with out finding any metal shavings inside. New hardened bolts were reinstalled and I have not experienced any problems to date.

I asked what could cause this problem other than defective bolts or factory torque specs not right, some what like the spark plug recall last year. He said, over revving the motor could be the issue or down shifting while racing. Now I have gone from 4th to 3rd when I was trying to shift into 5th by accident, but that has only happened a couple of times and I naturally immediately pushed the clutch back in and backed off the accelerator, the clutch had a smell like it got fried for 100 miles. I asked if any other S2000 at this dealership had any similar problem, he said that there was one car that some of the cam cap bolts had loosened and caused a similar noise.

OK, any one else have a similar problem????

If not, beware of a potential serious issue, next time you get the valves adjusted have someone check and re-torque all the bolts on the cams and cam gears.

 

For your clutch to smell like this for 100 miles, it had to have been partially engaged for a fairly decent amount of time at the mis-shift, so your definition of "immediate" is quite a bit longer than mine. I would hazzard to guess that your engine most likely encountered a significant over-rev.

 

Ya....what he said!
You know there was a reason I suggested you..... I knew you were up to the task.

Utah
Former Moderator
Under the Hood