jkelley

Stop.

Do not give you car to Honda or some 3rd party mechanic for a rebuild. This is not an easy motor to diagnose OR rebuild. There are VERY few people that can do it correctly, and well enough to where it will run for many tens of thousands of miles.

If you are in the south east, take it to Jordanskartell (on these forums, located in Tennessee) or Wadzii (Central North Carolina Speed Shop in Raleigh) or Billman250 located in the northeast if that is closer to you. I don't know where you would go if you are on the west coast, hopefully other can chime in.

Whatever you do, do NOT let Honda rebuild your motor with you. It will cost you a FORTUNE and I promise they will not do NEARLY as good of a job as any of the people I mentioned above can.

Search these boards and you will find NUMEROUS examples of why Honda is a BAD idea, and any of these folks above are a GOOD idea. This is not a Civic, this is an S2000. Unfortunately while the global Honda brand and engineering is elite... their service staff are typically complete garbage.

Best of luck.

Car Analogy

$4k for a used engine, while a brand new one from Honda is $3,200?

Yeah, the new one doesn't come with a new head, but it sounds like your head is OK.

Unless you are going with an S2K specialist rebuilder, going rebuilt is not going to work out, as others have mentioned. The S is very different in many ways from your typical motor. The FRM coated cylinders, the multiple sizes of rod and main bearing sizes.

Someone mentioned a new Honda motor would be good for another 100k trouble free miles. If you don't run it low on oil, or run into one of the other few issues these motors can have, its more like 300k+ miles.

steven975

One thing to consider is that I think Honda no longer has any F20C assembled blocks...all gone.

S2k031992

I call this shop in orange county and they work in honda and Acura only the name is WAVE AUTOSHOP. They told me they can rebuild the engine but also gave the option of getting a engine from japan. They found one for me but its too expensive. 6,800. For everything. Anyone knows if the pass the emissions for california?

99SH

^ Yes, so long as the engine is the same year or newer and has all the emissions equipment installed.

Soviet

For that price you should just rebuilt. I am having a local reputable shop rebuild my motor for ~2500, which includes buying a used block and crankshaft from them for a total of 900$. I realize this does not include the removal and installation but we are talking an OEM spec 0 mile rebuild.

jkelley

FYI there is a high degree of risk of issues down the road if you do not take it to one of the recommended people/businesses in this thread. There are many strange details on rebuilding these motors that most mechanics will overlook because "I know what I'm doing, I've rebuilt 1000+ engines." We've heard many, many, many stories of that on here. A quick chat with Jordanskartell or Billman250 and they can tell you what those differences because they've built a lot of THESE EXACT motors with a proven track record. Just because your shops does "Honda/Acura only" does NOT mean they can rebuild an F20 or F22 by ANY means.

Edit: And FYI even if they "go by the manual" to make sure to do it right, there are a couple of errors in the manual that Billman250 and Jordanskartell are aware of and avoid but a dealer/Honda/Acura specialist almost certainly will NOT.

S2k031992

This guy from the shop was talking to me saying that they work with s2000 and nsx all the time. They know those engines, they know how they work and will tell me if they can or can not do the rebuild on that car. They've done it before with no issues. They appear very convenient of their work.

TheKhemist

Too bad to hear about the F20 short blocks being all gone. This thread is why I am going to get a new OEM F22 shortblock for my 07 S

99SH

You misread. Long-blocks are no longer available, but short blocks are.