I've already tried making this post on s2ki, but the 14 day wait period denied me and I lost the post (for now).
So i'll just make a new one. Sorry if this is a lengthy post, I'd rather have everything briefly covered before continuing on to new things.
Catch Up Maintenance and New Parts... (7/19/19-8/5/19)
Initial Impressions & Inspection
Driving this car just feels really, really good... I don't know how else to put it. Compared to my FRS on TRD lowering springs, the stock S2000 suspension feels a lot stiffer, especially when hitting imperfections in the road. Also, i'm not sure if it's my current front tires or alignment spec, but the car really likes to pull towards the repaired cracks in the road and gets upset easily by road reflectors. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, since technically i'm getting more road feedback...
Beautiful F22C valve cover ft. old brake fluid.
Upon further inspection, it appears that my front tires are nearly bald on the insides. It looks like it could be camber and/or toe wear, but my fronts look like they have max -0.75 camber; nowhere near enough to wear it that badly. So I assume that my toe is out of spec, which could also be causing the car to pull towards road imperfections more?
Pretty pictures
Just driving around, learning how beautiful the car can be.
Spark plugs 7/26/19
This appears to be a lot easier than a spark plug job on a boxer motor. Not that I did mine, I had the dealership do it for me while they had the engine out for recall work.
I ordered NGK (7772) PFR7G-11S laser platinum plugs from amazon as replacements, which should be the direct replacement for stock.
An open OEM airbox is a neat tool tray when working in the engine bay hehe.
Old plugs
This seemed like it was needed, given the mileage. While I was taking these all out I also checked the gap each plug had. Here is what I measured, front to back; 1 being front most, 4 closest to the transmission:
1 .042 old, .039 new
2 .041 old, .039 new
3 .043 old, .039 new
4 .041 old, .039 new
The motor and accelerating seemed a lot smoother after replacement, especially around vtec.
Wheels! 7/28/19
Since I would be needing new tires anyways and I had a bit of moneys from parting out my FRS, I thought it would be a perfect time to get some new wheels. I know there's a population of the S2k community that prefers driving the car in stock form for a while before modding, but I figured since I didn't have the OEM tire compound to start with, why not just take the step up?
I had a hard time looking for wheels with the right specs that I wanted. Initially I wanted to maintain the OEM stagger dimensions while stepping the width up (7.5/8F, 9R), but I couldn't find a wheel face I liked in stock anywhere or in the local preowned B/S/T groups. Eventually I gave up on the staggered setup and started looking into squared setups. A 9 width seemed to be the sweet spot for availability, price and not downgrading from the OEM 8.5 rear width, with 255/40 all around.
Eventually I stumbled on this local set of CE28n 17x9 +50 that would fit stock body with a fender roll & some functional camber. The tires were pretty beat up NT01s, which i'll be replacing with a suitable "street" tire.
Formula silver will look amazing on berlina black!
Transmission & clutch fluid 7/29/19
No pictures here unfortunately. My transmission fluid looked brand new when drained and I replaced it with Honda MT fluid. Better safe than sorry. Clutch fluid was quite visibly dirty. Replaced with Motul RBF 600, set the bottle aside for by brake fluid flush since I only ordered 1 at the time instead of 2.
New lug nuts, tires, brake fluid, stereo discovery 8/1/19
This was an exciting day since it was my day off and all these beautiful parts decided to come in at the same time!
First up, Project Kics R40 lug nuts! These are some quality nuts compared to the Muteki SR48s I ran on my FRS. The chrome red finish got very beat up over the years, but they did the job as lug nuts. The R40s are also super light, very cool.
And my choice of tire isss... Bridgestone RE71Rs in 255/40/17 all around! A few people have told me that I am "crazy" and "wasting money" on tires I won't "use" to their maximum potential all the time and that I could have gotten 2 sets of tire "x" for the same price. However, I really wanted to raise the performance ceiling of the parts I got. I ran Hancook Ventus V12 Evo2 tires in 245/40/17 all around on my FRS. While they're great tires for daily usage, they were average at track driving and a bit sketchy on mountain driving. The sidewalls had a lot of flex to them and in some corners they would just slip out without warning. I wanted to avoid compromising on a tire, even if it meant they wouldn't last me a crazy amount of miles.
This was the state of my brake fluid...
Occasionally when I would brake, I'd feel a sponginess to the pedal. While bleeding the fluid almost no fluid came out of the front passenger caliper, so I guess I was running old fluid AND air in my system for a bit. Keep up with maintenance people...
Lastly for this day, when I got the car, it had an iphone and aux plug coming from the back of the radio. I pulled the stock radio and discovered this bluetooth receiver kit stuck in the back. Neat! I was debating on getting one of these or a new head unit with bluetooth, but I guess the decision was already made for me.
I'll be keeping this and the stock radio to preserve the "old" look to the car. I have some JBL door speakers from my FRS that I could also throw in here to improve sound quality a bit without adding too much weight.
Differential fluid replaced 8/3/19
The diff fluid I ordered (Amsoil 75w-110) took forever to reach me. It looks like it got stuck being shipped with UPS ground from across the country, but it's here now and that's all that matters.
It doesn't look like my diff fluid was ever changed, so it's good that I'm replacing it along with everything else.
Changing the fluid really made the driving experience a lot smoother. It doesn't feel like the motor is fighting the diff to rotate the tires since the sludgy OEM fluid was replaced with fresh fluid.
90% maintenance complete! 8/5/19
Today I learned that K&N air filters are, in reality, not red at all. It's K&N oil that is red, and I find that interesting.
And now I can say that a majority of the maintenance is complete. The exception being the engine oil & filter, which appear to be brand new, but judging from the rest of the car thus far, I should just replace it... The car runs a lot smoother than when I first got it, especially after the spark plug and differential fluid replacements. From here on out, i'll just be driving it and doing some mods here and there. I still have some work to do before fitting the wheels on properly, which i'm hoping to get done this week once a certain part(s) come in tomorrow/later (8/6) .
Though I will admit, the sidewalls are a bit stiff for poor California roads...
