VTEC Solenoid Gaskets

One thing that's bugged me pretty much since I bought Lupa but surprisingly never got around to fixing was addressing an extremely minor oil leak resulting in gunk accumulating in the front of the engine. It's never leaked bad enough that oil was dripping but clearly some of it was seeping through otherwise there wouldn't be those stains.

Dirty engine from oil leak - 5-12-2018

Based on the location it's coming from I'm pretty sure it's from the VTEC solenoid and leaky solenoid gaskets are pretty common on S2000s as they age. Considering the car is now 13 years old (yikes a teenager), I think she's overdue for new gaskets. Normally I'd go OEM but Honda only makes replacement lower VTEC solenoid gaskets. Pretty much everyone uses replacement upper gaskets from Kraken Automotive so I figured it would be safe to just get the upper and lower from them.

New upper and lower VTEC solenoid gaskets - 5-12-2018

Replacing the gaskets is ridiculously easy and only takes a 10mm socket so I figured this is something I could tackle myself. The only thing that usually catches people is over tightening the bolts and snapping them during re-installation so I picked up a simple 1/4" drive torque wrench so I wouldn't make that mistake and turn this simple job into a bigger event. I unclipped the plugs going to the solenoid and oil pressure switch then removed the three 10mm bolts holding the upper solenoid itself. The old gasket didn't look too bad unlike some pictures I've seen. It wasn't brittle but was definitely on the hard side. I cleaned everything off, used some of the oil to lubricate the new gasket and popped it in.

Old upper VTEC solenoid gasket exposed - 5-12-2018

Fresh upper solenoid gasket - 5-12-2018

After putting the top back on, I removed the three bolts holding the solenoid to the head. Same story with the old gasket here, quite flat and hard but not terribly brittle yet. Had to carefully pry it out, cleaned off the surface then installed the new gasket.

Old lower VTEC solenoid gasket - 5-12-2018

New gasket installed - 5-12-2018

Everything was then re-installed and all the bolts torqued to 12Nm (8.7ft-lb). Cleaned up the old nasty grease that had accumulated on the engine as much as I could then took her out for a drive to make sure I still had VTEC and had no leaks and so far so good.

VTEC Solenoid reinstalled - 5-12-2018

Cleaned off engine bay to check for new leaks - 5-12-2018

Final event before "Summer Break"

It's only my second event of the season and well it's already the last event before what I'll call "summer break". I'm missing the NJ ProSolo next weekend because of work obligations and there aren't really any events I want to go to locally until maybe mid-June so going to focus on other things and finish up Bumblestook.

NNJR SCCA Autox - 4-29-2018

The day didn't start off too well. I went to get Lupa and found she had a flat passenger rear tire. I was about to call the day quits but Rad convinced me to go jack the car up, grab the wheel and take it to a local tire shop. Thankfully we found one open on a Sunday and they were able to patch it up so I was able to get my runs in today. The size of the bolt that found its way into the tire was quite impressive.

Flat causing bolt - 4-29-2018

I drove the car yesterday just fine so I must've somehow picked it up near my garage since it definitely wasn't flat when I was done driving. It was stuffed in there pretty good so it ended up being a slow leak but was bad enough for the tire to have no pressure at all in the morning.  As for the event itself. I always have fun autocrossing but man am I really slow. If I keep up this rate of decline in my driving I might as well pick up knitting as a hobby instead. Didn't help of course that the clouds blocked the sun and the constant wind kept cooling my tires so I never got any kind of grip that gave me confidence. Not going to blame the tire though. I didn't string the corners together smoothly enough to extract the most time. Oh well, there's always a next time. You can't ever be unhappy driving an S2000 so that's always a big positive.

Steguis - NNJR SCCA - 4-29-2018

Kicking off the season

After what oddly seemed like a short winter to me thanks to all the work we were doing on Bumblestook, it was finally time for me to do the first autocross of the season. Pretty much everyone has already had a few events already but it turned out to not be a bad day for a first event for me as we were blessed with perfect weather.  It was warm, but not uncomfortable, sunny, but breezy.

NNJR SCCA Autocross - 4-14-2018

This is the first event with the new power setup and also switching from RE71Rs to BFG Rival S. I was very pleasantly surprised to note that without really touching the suspension setup from last year, she felt really good today after setting the tires pressures to 28/25psi hot. I think the setup suits the RivalS much better than the REs. Gone is the hyperactive rear and the tires seemed to be much more foregiving. I put down a decent midpack time, certainly nothing to write home about but I was glad with the progress.

Lupa in action - 4-14-2018
Photo by: Alex Meramo

Each run I was getting back into the comfort zone and dropping time. Improvement is always something to be happy about even if it's in tiny increments. There was plenty more time to be had on course but for now I'm just glad to be out there having fun again. The good thing is nothing really needs to be done to the car and the time can be made up with improving the driver (me) which is exactly what I wanted. Get back to the basics and focus on the driving without all the other distractions.

Steguis - NNJR SCCA - 4-14-2018

Seems I was having weird datalogging issues today. The GPS position is quite a bit off and so is the video sync. Oh well, not really important stuff to worry about for now.

Battle Ready for 2018

While Bumblestook has been my primary focus of attention over the winter, let's not forget which car got promoted to primary race car for the 2018 season. Hopefully the last snowfall of the season is behind us so I went off to see SJF today to do a bit of pre-season prep on Lupa.

Pre-season Prep - SJF Performance - 3-24-2018

The first thing I wanted to get done after we figured it out on Bumblestook was to replace the Buddy Club Super Lowdown rails with OEM rails SJF modified to fit the Recaro Pole Position seat. This improves safety as the I've never been fond of the relatively cheap build quality of the BC rails and it provides a much smoother (well it is OEM after all) sliding action. The seating position is perfect and there's absolutely no play or flex in the mount. It's not the cheapest thing to do but a great alternative if you run wider seats that don't fit the Mugen rails (my absolute first choice in seat rails). SJF and I were both confused when I got the rails because on Bumblestook the adjustment handle is on the right but apparently the 06+ S2000s have the handle on the left side on the driver seat. I picked up these 06 rails because someone just happened to be selling them and the driver side rails fit 00-09 S2000s but that's an interesting little detail I didn't know before.

Modified 2006 S2000 OEM rails - 3-24-2018

Modified 2006 S2000 OEM rails - 3-24-2018

Also, it seems that I completely forgot to change any of the fluids last year. I had changed it at the end of the 2016 season but between not being able to make many events last year and being focused on getting Bumblestook ready for Nationals, it had completely escaped my mind. No real harm though. I don't think she even did 3000 miles last year. Engine, transmission and diff fluid was all flushed. She's back to feeling super smooth again.

Fluid changes - 3-24-2018

Finally to cap off the day, she's finally back on the Advans but this year they're wrapped in BFG Rival S 1.5s that were previously on Rad's car. Tire shine courtesy of his detailer last year smh. I'm going to have to take it easy at the first event unless I want a close encounter with a solid object.

Back on competition wheels and tires
Advan RSII with BFG Rival S 1.5
3-24-2018

She's going to have to wait a few weeks before her first outing though but at least she'll be ready for action because April is looking like back to back to back to back race weekends. STR may have fully swung over to favor the ND Miatas but Lupa has unfinished business and I don't like unfinished business.

Replacing the CMC, Adding Power and Dropping Weight

After the last event, I noticed on my way home that the transmission was starting to feel really notchy and then last week while driving Lupa around, I suddenly couldn't disengage the clutch to change gears. I noticed that the clutch fluid reservoir was really low and friends on the faceballs suggested it was likely a leaking clutch master cylinder.

New OEM Clutch Master Cylinder - 11-19-2017

Part numbers for refence - 11-19-2017

I ordered both a new clutch master and slave cylinder and today I went to SJF Performance to replace them. Removal of the old CMC immediately revealed the leak. Thankfully it was a slow leak and I was able to simply top off the reservoir in order to drive the car to the shop. The new CMC bolted in pretty easily minus the finicky nut that goes in the footwell near the ECU. You could just barely fit a deep socket in there to loosen it up.

Leaking CMC - 11-19-2017

Although there was no leak in the slave cylinder, I opted to replace both as a precaution. With both replaced, there was obviously a ton of air in the system that needed to be bled out. To speed this up, SJF used the cap of my old CMC to fabricate a way to pump in some compressed air to help push the fluid through. It only took a few minutes to fully bleed the system using this method. We also flushed the trans fluid since it's been a while since I last had it done. The clutch is now nice and firm and the shifts are once again buttery smooth as one would expect from an S2000. 

New OEM Clutch Slave Cylinder installed - 11-19-2017

With Rad moving ahead with his part out plan, I decided to fix the one issue that's been nagging me about Lupa since I build her for STR. Having driven both my car and Rad's, his car always had an obvious power advantage. This is mostly due to me having an exhaust setup that's more designed for a sporty feel and sound on the road than straight up maximum race performance. Rad's car had a Toda Torquie-Kun header (the same that I installed in Bumblestook earlier this year) ceramic coated by JetHot mated to a 70mm Berk high flow cat and a 70mm T1R 70R-EM stainless steel exhaust and a dyno tune by Karcepts on his Greddy EManage Ultimate EMU. I jumped on the opportunity and grabbed his Toda Header and his Greddy EMU. However, I instead opted to pick up a new 70mm Evasive Motorsports high flow cat and full titanium 70mm T1R 70R-EM exhaust from Clyde's never-realized STR build. 

Old PLM header top / New (to me) Toda header bottom -  11-19-2017

Berk HFC top / New EVS HFC bottom - 11-19-2017

T1R 70R-EM Titanium - 11-19-2017

This would ensure that the tune on Rad's Greddy EMU would give the same performance from what I felt on his car. The reason for getting the titanium exhaust was simple...weight. The T1R 70EM in Titanium weighs only 14lbs, a 20lb reduction over my 34lb titanium dual tip Mugen exhuast. 

Rad's Greddy EMU with dyno tune (left) /
My old Greddy EMU with Karcepts reflash (right)

The install was of course very straight forward although the Innovative 75A motor mounts on the car blocked the Toda header from just slotting in unlike the old PLM header. SJF had to remove the passenger side mount in order to get it in. After swapping the EMUs and recalibrating the TPS voltages, we were able to fire her up. I took her for a test drive and the low end power is very impressive. It's exactly the missing mid/lower power I felt Lupa was missing all this time and the exhaust sounds pretty good too though quite a bit deeper and louder than my Mugen exhaust.

T1R exhaust installed - 11-19-2017

EVS 70mm HFC installed - 11-19-2017

Toda Torquie-Kun header installed - 11-19-2017

I'm super glad that the clutch and transmission feels great again and the new power mods are going to be a big help next year. The only thing left for next season is switching up the tires to BFG Rival-S 1.5 instead RE-71R. For now she's back to riding on stock wheels with Continental DWS for the winter.

Side note: I also replaced the nasty 2-year old air cabin filter with a new one from Rad's S2000 parts stash.

New air cabin filter - 11-16-2017

NNJR SCCA Season Closer

It's been a good season. Despite probably being the season with the least number of events I've attended in 10 years, I had a blast at every event and it's been a successful season overall. It's the end of October and we're still out there in the sun with the top down burning rubber and it's great! Realized last week that Lupa was feeling extra loose because the last event I attended was at Bader field and I had the rear bar cranked up. We put the rear bar back to full soft and ran slightly lower pressures (27f/25r) and it's much easier to get aggressive with the throttle again.

Rad getting ready to run - NNJR SCCA
Meadowlands, NJ - 10/28/2017

Rad codrove with me again. His car is quickly getting parted out so it probably won't be soon before the car is sold. I did happen to get this sweet seat protector from Rad that he got from Clyde. Not sure if I'm keeping it on but it should protect the seat from wear and tear.

Recaro Seat Protector - 10/26/2017

It was a special finale event today. Basically two events in one. We ran clockwise in the morning and counter clockwise in the afternoon. Fun flowing course and I'm slowly regaining some confidence in the lower grip levels. Looking forward to next season.

Steguis - NNJR SCCA - 10-28-2017

Rad - NNJR SCCA - 10-28-2017

Late Season Fun

It's pretty rare to have amazing "shorts" weather at the end of October so needless to say the NNJR SCCA event we had today was another record breaker in terms of attendance. With the days getting shorter, taking the extra trek to bring out Bumblestook isn't happening so it was time to have fun with Lupa and work on the driver instead.

NNJR SCCA Event #10 - Meadowlands, NJ - 10/21/2017

I finally got to put on the new number plates Kamil made for Lupa. I think it's much easier to read the numbers now than the previous red on black. I had Rad codrive since his STR S2000 is now parked getting ready to be parted out and sold so he can get an FRS/BRZ for SSC next year. Unlike all previous events I promised myself I would not touch any knobs or change any settings. We set the tire pressures at 28f/26r and just ran the car trying to go faster with each run. Overall she was very well balanced but it's definitely rough for me readjusting to lower grip. I spun her twice in 5 runs from overly abrupt input. I think driving Lupa more will really help me focus on smoother and earlier inputs. My driving has definitely gotten worse in recent years and street tire S2000s sure punish you hard when you drive like a jackass.

NNJR SCCA Autox - 10-21-2017

The course was fast and fun and required a set of balls that I probably left somewhere in NYC. Either way, I had loads of fun and got to enjoy the drive to and from the event which isn't really something I can say when I'm trailer to events. Looking forward to our final event next weekend. Hopefully we catch a break and get one last good weather day for our final autocross fling for the season.