Well the toy has 37K on her and is an '02.

the suspension has been having this weird hard clunk whenever I hit a a change of an inch or so in the road.
Bad enough that when we had it on the lift two nights ago we went through and torqued the subframe bolts to make sure it wasn't loose.
All the balls joints tested out ok and every thing appeared tight.

finally we popped the hood again and just did a bounce test on the shock towers.
sure enough after the third or forth bounce the delicate (not) clunk appeared.

putting it back up on the lift, we looked a the shock towers from the wheel well side and sure enough they were coated with oil.
the shock was blown on the drivers side front corner.
Additional inspection revealed that all but the drivers rear shock had given up the ghost or at least some of it's oil.

The odd part is, the car handles really well, doesn't porpoise, roll or dive under breaking and corners stably and well.

I don't know if they use a two stage shock and the second stage is kaput.
no accidents or other adventures that I am aware of that would precipitate such a failure.
I am probably a faster than average driver based on the reaction of some who have driven with me or caravaned but that is always on highway.

so an advisory, check your shocks folks.

 

Jerry, you might want to check the boards for used OEM shocks. People modify suspensions and have them laying around in the garage. Maybe even the AP2 shocks would be good.

 

Good advice.

I try to give the entire undercarriage a good look-see during oil changes.

 

Or some CR shocks and springs?

 

Jerry, when I took my car for the first state inspection (two years after purchase), it failed for a broken shock, and I too never really noticed an issue.

 

I never heard of the S2000 shocks being a problem. Do you think the problem was due to potholes or just bad shocks?

 

Maybe my $400 Honda scheduled service isn't so bad.

 

Good news is used original S suspensions are a dime a dozen in the for sale forum.

 

there are a fair amount of stories of shocks failing at fairly early mileage.
most gas shocks these days are easily good for a 100K.

as I said earlier, nothing stands out in my mind of any event which would have caused it.
I can't even recall any hard thumps.
While do drive it on the rather quick side, I don't 'beat' on it per se.

The biggest bumps it hits are in my driveway and rarely if ever do any city driving where potholes are an issue.

If I hadn't just depleted my toy budget I'd pop for the CR springs and shocks in the for sale section.
But given the appearance of less than stellar reliability of the shocks, I may go new rather used as well.
The toy will be sleeping in a week or so anyways so I have all winter to sort it out.

 

I'm pretty sure my shocks are bad. I've got over 83,000 miles on my 5 year old '05 S2000. I've been considering what to replace them with. OEMs new are big bucks. I've been told to go for Bilsteins, like I put on my NSX.

In my experience, all my Hondas had their shocks give out around 70,000 miles. I expect it.