On To The Next One

A couple of weeks ago I posted that I was planning on selling Lupa and the response was a bit overwhelming. Almost every part including the car itself was spoken for within 24 hours and I'm glad that it all went to people that will put her and her parts to good use. I kept some of the choice pieces such as the ATS diff and Motons as spares for Bumblestook though. There's no such thing as too many spares! SJF Performance did a bang up job getting her back to stock for me pretty quickly once I had finished acquiring the missing stock parts.

Lupa with her new owner, Glenn - 7-15-2018

Today I finally handed over Lupa to her new owner, Glenn. This makes me particularly happy as I'll still be able to see her at races and I'm sure Glenn will enjoy her every bit as much as I did. I forgot how incredibly awesome the S2000 is even in stock form. It's been a fun few years but I've got something else lined up that I'm really excited about. The awkward part is that the new car will go head to head against Lupa in B-Street so that'll make things extra fun for me.

/end

The Final Chapter

A little over four years ago, after surrendering Bumblestook's plates and turning her into a dedicated race car and trailer queen, I realized how much I missed driving an S2000 around on the street and I ended buying Lupa and chronicled her journey in this blog.

Lupa in her current trim

We've had some incredible times. I spent a lot of time driving to all sorts of places with the top down. Her driver seat was a great place to re-establish focus and be alone with my thoughts. Eventually fully prepped for STR, she served as a "training/backup" car for events where I didn't feel like towing Bumblestook. We drove all the way down to Key West and back going from near freezing temps to scorching sticky weather and back again all with the top down just because.

S2000 East Coast Tour 2015 Video

Two years ago, I had to awesome opportunity to see both Lupa and Bumblestook compete at the SCCA Solo National Championship and share my love for these cars and the sport with more people.

2016 SCCA Solo Nationals

Each S2000 had their own purpose and everything made sense. Fast forward to now and Bumblestook is back in all her glory as a legitimate "one car to do it all" street legal S2000. It seems obvious then that when presented with an opportunity to drive one, I'm always going to pick the keys of the car that started it all for me, Bumblestook. There are many reasons I can justify keeping Lupa but it is time to let her go. While I have no financial need to sell her, one thing I refuse to do is just leave her parked when she can be out there being driven hard and enjoyed as every S2000 should.

One of the rare moments both cars were together

This is the 2nd to last post for this blog. The final blog post will be for when she's finally sold. The plan now is to part her out and bring her back to mostly stock form so I can offer her up for a very reasonable price and allow more people to share in what I like to call #s2klove. It's been literally and figuratively a great ride and now it's time to find her a good home.

Lupa's final event - 6-3-2018

Final Car Details:

2005 Honda S2000
Silverstone with Red/Black interior (around 1 of 520 made in 2005)
77K miles

Engine/Drivetrain
K&N FIPK Intake
Toda Torquie-Kun Header Jet-Hot coated
70mm EVS High Flow Cat
T1R 70-EM Full Titanium cat-back exhaust
New OEM clutch and flywheel installed at around 55k miles
ATS Spec III clutch-type differential
GReddy Emanage Ultimate with Karcepts dyno tune (8600rpm redline)
Moroso Catch Can
Innovative 75A poly motor mounts and transmission mount
Poly filled OEM differential mounts
New CMC and VTEC solenoid gaskets
New Deka EXT14 lightweight battery

Suspension
Karcepts front and rear sway bars
Moton Clubsport dual adjustable shocks rebuild/revalved by ANZE Suspension
850lb/650lb Hypercoil springs
Hardrace front camber joint

Exterior
OEM CR Lip
OEM license plate holes deleted, bracket removed
Robbins Cloth soft top with glass window
Advan RSII in Hyperblack 17x9 +63 with Advan aluminum center caps
255/40/17 BFG RivalS 1.5 all around
LED bulbs everywhere (turn signals, parking lights, reverse, license plate)

Interior/Electronics
Alcantara wrapped and thickened OEM steering wheel
Evasive Motorsports spec Black/Red Recaro Pole position. (black velour headrest, black jersey sides, a red suede center and classic double red stitching)
Mugen leather shift knob with red stitching
Alpine headunit with Alpine Type-S speakers and inline sub
Modifry Shift Beeper
Modifry cup holder

Miscellaneous Items
OEM AP2V1 wheels wrapped in Continental DSW tires
Original VIN matched transmission (has 2nd gear popout, transmission currently in car has 5K fewer miles than odometer)
Spare driver and passenger side mirrors
OEM driver seat

Another mid-pack performance

Surprisingly we got an NNJR SCCA event suddenly added to our schedule in June (joint with the NNJR PCA) so obviously I had to take the opportunity to go. It was a fun course and I had a great time despite the unseasonably cooler temps in June (low 60s) and a stiff constant wind at the meadowlands making it feel even cooler and challenging to get any heat in the BFGs.

NNJR SCCA Autox - 6-3-2018

I can't say I was terribly happy with my driving. It's pretty lackluster and I'm not even mildly mid-pack. It's definitely not the car holding me back. I think it's a combination of reduced skill and practice along with a loss of serious motivation or competitive hunger right now. Normally this time of year I have my game face on and prepping for the Toledo ProSolo but with my calendar clear of any big events this year, I don't really think I'm trying hard at all.

NNJR SCCA Autox - 6-3-2018
Photo by: Alex Meramo

Maybe I'll find my way out of this rut soon but for now i'm going to continue to enjoy the sport for what it is...a place where I can enjoy the limits of my car safely and hang out with friends.

Steguis - NNJR SCCA - 6-3-2018

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.