Honda S2000 Buyers Guide and More

[Music] welcome to a video on the Honda s2000 now this is really an extension of a review that I did on this very exact car and there's so much detail in there that you should just watch that first it's probably gonna help you in a lot of ways if you've already watched that or you're on the fence about buying an s2000 or you've decided to consider this a buyer's guide for the exterior anterior and more of the mechanical aspects of pretty much every generation of 2000 so get ready now when you have a vehicle like the s2000 it's been out for about twenty years there's gonna be a ton of information and misinformation about it and because this car was released around the era of when Internet forms were on their heyday like s2k I most of the knowledge base is there and it was a mess trying to find out what you wanted done and it's a mess trying to find out what you want now so what I'm trying to do is consolidate some of that what I've learned through all the years from people that have made a ton of mistakes we've run through the gamut of owning these cars and trying to make this pretty cohesive now pretty much like every other vehicle you're going to inspect the exterior now the s2000 is not some exotic or esoteric platform it's like every other 90 sound of you've seen so the only thing that's different really here is you have an aluminum hood and you can check that simply by sticking a magnet to it if it's had some knockoff steel hood put on while your magnets gonna stick to it but every other panel is steel you can tell by sticking a magnet all of it the doors the fenders the rear quarter the rear trunk but the bumpers are plastic so it's easy to tell if somebody's replaced the fenders with fiberglass because your magnet will not stick to it the other thing like many Honda's every single panel has a VIN number to it that should be tied to obviously a title or the engine code so the hood has a VIN sticker the front two fenders the front bumper the doors the trunk and the rear bumper all have that and that makes it extremely easy for you to know if app a bumper or a panel has been replaced now I'm just gonna say this these are older cars and the way that the s2000 is designed the front bumpers are absolutely chip and rock magnets same thing with the front windshield you might not see a Honda name on the front glass because it's been replaced they're extremely easy to chip and crack the bumpers take a lot of abuse if they if they weren't wrapped and let's be honest back in the day there was 3m clear bra but a lot of people didn't use that so it's possible that the front bumper has been repainted completely or replaced windshields could be replaced rear bumpers could have been repainted this is not the end of the world unless you're looking for some collectible you know if you're gonna stick it in a garage and store it forever you know these are very common you know replacement items or repaint items now sometimes you're not gonna find a VIN sticker on the inner part of the door here and if you don't if it was a factory Honda replacement door you'll see a sticker that says dot usually with a Honda badge that means the entire door frame has been replaced and the problem with these doors is if the skin or the outer shell gets damaged sometimes body shops will just replace the entire door because in all fairness it's a lot easier to do that sometimes than trying to reskin the door so even a door replacement isn't that big of a deal as long as you see the VIN on this inner cell in this inner cell here which is kind of right by the door latch if you don't see them in there then chances are this thing was in a pretty hefty accident or sideswiped now the next thing is some common sense people get off the deep end when they're looking for a perfect car or something and they just get really worried you pop the trunk of the hood and like I said there's a VIN number on all the panel's let's say you're missing a VIN on the bumpers and you're just freaked out what happened well it's possible the VIN got rubbed off during a detail or whatever if you have a VIN number still on the trunk lid or on the hood chances are you're fine because this car so low that if you really got an impact and he hit in the back would damage the trunk lid or the hood and would have to be replaced and you wouldn't have your VIN on there so again you just have to use a little bit of common sense now the next thing seems real obvious when you get in the trunk look at the condition if you go in the bottom and you see that it's missing the jab and the tools the tow hook or their severely damaged that means that somebody went through some type of ordeal with this if they're missing completely well you want to know why or better yet the whole trunk is lined with this kind of felt material and if this is damaged missing partly removed there's a ton of clips out the spare tire is all mangled chances are this was modified you know I've had to remove part of mine to remove the spare tire so I can get to the shock towers to adjust my dampers and that's really common on these cars if you see a perfect trunk lining with all the clips everything looks pristine it's a good chance this car's never been screwed with now the next thing to look at are the headlights and taillights if somebody says while I'm a single owner and I've always garaged my car and the headlights are UV damaged with some haze over them or the taillights you know that there's something soft back there and you know you have to decide whether that's a big deal or not the next thing is kind of more important and that is the wheels if you're getting a stock car from 2000 to 2001 they had this silver cast or silver paint to them in 2002 and three it was the same identical wheel but they added a bit of gold metallic Fleck in the paint color so the wheel was just slightly different colored so you can tell easily if somebody had a wheel replaced because the biggest thing was is if you had a note or no three and you had it refinished or replaced oftentimes they'd put the the older wheel with the silver on there and you can tell in the paint color from 2005 and 2006 I'm sorry 2004 to 2005 you would get the ap2 wheels and they were identical between both years and then they changed them again but definitely look at the wheel condition if it's a stock wheel and look for differences between one or the other if one is in immaculate condition and the paint color seems just like slightly off you know that that wheels probably been refinished and you want to look very closely at that side to see if there's any damage around there now the next thing you want to look at is the fender liners front and rear now if somebody has run wider wheels and tires almost always on these cars you're gonna see fender liner damage this plastic here if somebody has roll defenders to accommodate them you will see this lip folded in and the plastic liner will not be attached via plastic clip very easily you might even see a zip tie here but one of the easiest ways to tell is fender line or damage or rub through that way you know somebody has made some changes here if you're on stock wheels and tires and you still see that now if you're on a wider wheel and tire and you're okay with that you're just gonna have to look for signs of damage from that wheel you're gonna want to look at the wheel condition obviously and then all the associated panels around here the front bumper the fender area the rear fender area to make sure there's no severe damage to the paint from somebody running insanely sticky tires which again is a super common thing on here now in the back it's much of the same story if somebody has run wider wheels and tires a lot of times namely if they've tracked it and they've lowered it a lot this bumper tab here which is a screw that holds the bumper to the fender may have been damaged or relocated farther down to fit that different wheel tire combination so if you see a stock wheel you still want to check to see if that's been altered at all the second thing is rear quarter damage or rear-end damage is extremely common on these cars from people sliding them out curbing them you know sideways action into a fixed object this panel gets a lot of replacement now that doesn't mean there's severe bodywork but it's possible that this panel has been repainted and you won't it won't affect the VIN numbers so you want to check the paint color on here and on the bumper to see if it matches the second thing is this entire wheel arch has a rubber you know a rubber seal or just weather stripping that runs all along this part if the paint or the panel has been retouched a lot of times this stripping will be gone or somebody will have might not have replaced that it's an easy way to tell also check the fender well for paint or under coating that's not there if there's been a lot of a lot of paintwork done sometimes they won't repaint the undercoating and it should be solid black there's splotches everywhere either the tires or rocks have chipped it off or you know somebody did a bad job of the repaint but again all the combinations of these things should help you identify if there's something really suspect here one of the last things to look at what the exterior is the windshield and I talked about that earlier it's really common to have these replaced and the bottom left you can see if it doesn't say Honda it might say PPG it might say some other brand like I have take a look at the stripping the weather stripping or the rubber seal that goes along the windshield is it bubbling up are there any defects in the way that it was done is it coming off it might be something you have to deal with the second thing you want to look at is are there any adhesive marks or stickers that were left behind near the passenger side or driver side on the top a lot of times if somebody's done a track-day or auto cross they'll put stickers on your windshield or decals to give you a number or how many runs you've had and if there's adhesive all over you know that's probably the case the second thing is you want to look for suction cup residue on the inside part of the glass if there's a ton of them well you probably know it was a camera mounted a GPS module for track time and the whole point of this is to understand to ask the seller if they're not going to disclose this stuff to you it's a pretty big red flag you know tracking these cars autocrossing them that's what they're for but if an owners not gonna tell you what they did and how they kept up with the car and it's it's just not a good thing now before I move on to the mechanical aspect to the s2000 which is one of the most important things in terms of the exterior a visual inspection is gonna be your best bet do not go by CARFAX do not go by auto check because of a lot of the incidents with these cars may have happened before any of that was recorded and I can't tell you how many times I've seen even on cars as new as 2016 there might be an incident or accident reported on a Carfax not at an Auto Check and vice versa so just know that you're gonna want to visually inspect this or get a ton of pictures before you sign on the dotted line alright one of the last big things is the top you get in here you want to check the latches first thing is you want to check the latches do they hold in place if you push if you if you can pull them down without pushing the buttons in on the side well then you know the latches are damaged how do they release how do they latch is the top bent check out the operation put the top down and a good test to see if the battery is really bad put the top down without starting the car because if it's really straining to go down chances are you have a bad battery or there's a problem with the motor or the top is but if it goes down cleanly that that's a pretty positive sign now the soft top condition is a big deal it's expensive to replace and there's a ton of labor that goes into doing it so unless you're just gonna stick a hard top on here and never use the retractable roof you're gonna want to look at this the first thing they know is in 2000 and 2001 it had a plastic rear window and it was just a such a shitty design I mean that window would fade crack so pretty much all of those have been replaced if they have a ton of mileage on them so if you see a no one or a 2000 with a glass or window you know it's been done now if you have a 2002 to 2009 you're gonna want to look at the condition and the first suspect thing to look for when you put down this roof is when you put the top down it might not go down all the way and it's kind of on this upward position if you see it not go down all the way ten-to-one the fabric straps that the fabric elastic straps that help pull it down all the way are completely worn out it should go down pretty much flat like that now there's a really easy fix to this and you're gonna want to check the strap condition all right checking the straps you put the top up pretty much right about here and right about in this area you can see a fabric strap if it's really flimsy floppy and no tension on it well you know you need to replace them there is an aftermarket kit to do it it's you know takes you probably about 20 minutes to do there's no drilling there's no riveting you just cut the old straps out put these in and it will bring it back to normal operating condition if you leave it floppy and it's not going down all the way it's gonna put a hole on the top eventually the second thing to look forward is some of these bars in here the support bars have birds from the factory and it will rub itself a hole into the top and again this is one of the most important things to inspect if there's holes this it's gonna be a pain in the ass to replace and you might want to negotiate the price down if they're even willing to do that when you get on the interior vin s2000 there's a lot of obvious things to look for much like any car you want to look at carpet conditioned floor mat condition door panels seats the 2000 and 2001 had carpeted carpeted center tunnel here it did not have a vinyl coating so you want to look at the carpeting condition there but one of the biggest things you can tell how an owner has kept it up by looking at little things like the seals the door seals the weather stripping the plastics have they been taken care of and since there's so much weather stripping on here and seals if they dry out you're gonna have a lot of wind noise a lot of just annoyances with squeaks and rattles now I've always used 303 on my top it's just old school it's always worked I've never had a problem with my top and I always use the tried-and-true chin itsu silicone grease you can use whatever you want but as long as you use that you can tell if an owners used it because these seals will look brand new if somebody's never touched them it's gonna look like dried out discolored really nasty same with the dashboard again it's about maintenance and care how does it look does it look maintained are there a ton of scratches on everything is the cluster scratched are there scratches all over them knobs and buttons and switches how is the shift knob look is there scratches and gouges all over it you know obviously if somebody's wearing a ring they're gonna tear up the stock knob it's really soft but you know it's the attention to detail if somebody's cared for this you won't find a lot of wear and tear in here now in terms of the seats this is one of my big complaints about the s2000 I really dislike these seats they're super narrow so if you're not a skinny mini I mean I'm talking like under 180 you're gonna just wear out the bolsters on these seats and it's really really hard to find an s2000 with perfect seats even mine I must I don't know a second or third owner of this car the driver's seat is totally destroyed the left bolster is totally worn out the right side is in similar condition and there's just not a lot you can do about it so if you're gonna get super anal about it if you can find a perfect seat you're gonna be lucky now the other things to check is has this interior been modified at all namely the seats how are the seat rails can you easily adjust it was there a camera mount put here you know that's another thing why would somebody put a camera mount there unless they're probably tracking or autocrossing the car look at the steering wheel has it been modified changed if it's been modified at all make sure everything is tight if the head units been changed because the CD player in here sucks the audio system really does and most people are gonna swap it out how was the wiring done you know if they're using a stock head unit or something similar have they put a USB dongle and I found a couple s2000s where it would leach power when the car was off and you'd have a flat battery in a week it's little things like this that you want to check if it's been modified you know how was the work done did the owner have receipts for it and just make sure that it's not a half-ass job is my point the last thing that you're gonna want to kind of realize when you're driving this is take a listen to driving it with the top latched you know you're gonna notice some creaking and rattling here you're gonna hear it little plastic you know creaks and rattles from the the visors from the top maybe not being perfectly latched if the seals haven't been lubricated properly you're gonna hear more wind noise these seats make a song and noise the leather is like oh it's so annoying anyway if you have your seat belt on it will rub on here and you're gonna hear squeaks from the seat belts all the time it's another reason I hate these seats in the material it's not a quiet interior but if you're hearing like really bad top rattle like knocking sounds stuff like that you probably have bad latches you're gonna want to take a look at that you might have a bent top if you're hearing excessive wind noise like like a hole through the top you know you want to look at that I mean you're good it's gonna be a noisy cabin that's just the bottom line but you're gonna want to look for things that are like super obvious that are just not right under the hood of this mm one of the most important places when I've shopped for these cars I would say 99% of the time I'm choosing one with a completely stock engine bay no aftermarket stuff and if you find a car to dealership that is fully loaded with an intake a radiator a catch-can a master cylinder brace a strut bar silicone hoses all that crap just you know if you're desperate just make sure it's all installed properly but I will tell you one thing if you're just running a stock s2000 engine no you know no power adders there's really not a lot of need to change any of this it is that good and I'm not kidding you so if an owner you're going to a private party they have a bunch of modifications ask why they did it you know who installed it do they have the original factory parts to return it back to stock and it's probably gonna make you feel a lot better now with the ap2 or AP one the major difference are gonna tell under the hood is the ap1 had a silver coil cover in a p2 in 2004 it went to gold and the rest of the time in 2006 they want to drive by wire so you don't see the throttle cables to the throttle body you don't see the cruise control module and a little bit of changes there but for the most part it's all gonna look very similar throughout its nine years of production now one of the major things you want to look for with an a p1 is you want to ask the owner if they had the valve retainers replaced because it's a real common failure point they updated the valve retainers in 2004 because in the ap1 generation they cracked and a lot of times they crack from being over revved now that's not something you're going to be able to tell if the owner doesn't know it's one of the first things you want to do is get that valve cover off inspect the valve retainers on the intake side and you're going to if you can't verify it's been replaced just replace the retainers and the keepers while you're in there do a valve adjustment valve adjustment valve adjustment it's one of the most important things on the s2000 motor to make sure it's in spec and you don't want it too tight and you don't want it too loose it's something there's an art to it if you do that disp engine will run for a long time really well the next thing you want to make sure is you want to replace the spark plugs if it hasn't been done with not aftermarket ones Honda ones and you want to make sure the torque on the spark plugs is exact you do not want these spark plugs loose you want them a little bit over factory spec the next thing you're going to want to look listen for is the timing chain rattling and you're gonna this is a really common problem as these cars age doesn't matter ap 1 AP 2 there's a problem with the design of the timing chain tensioner and Billman has found this he was one of the first to come up with the timing chain tensioner replacement he's designed it redesigned the factory one I've used them in two different cars have had zero issues with it it's one of the first things I do on every car I just proactively replace it unless it's already in there pretty much everything else you want to make sure that your coolant system is bled properly that you have extreme hot heat coming out of the heater in the car otherwise it might have some air in it so that's another thing you want to check make sure all the fluids are right namely your brake fluid your clutch fluid the engine oil should be clean when you check it if it's low when you're shopping if it's low and it's really dark huge red flag the last few things to talk about in terms of maintenance early on these motors had a problem with their map sensor and people didn't really understand why if it was getting fouled or loose so Honda released an updated SKU for the map sensor which is just a glorified plastic harness with a zip tie to keep it in there securely and it's eliminated all the issues with that so if you don't have that zip tie on that map sensor order from Honda the next thing you're gonna want to do is make sure that the throttle bodies are cleaned on this car it doesn't matter if it's drive-by-wire or the old school with the throttle cable keep that clean otherwise you might have some weird performance or idle issues last thing from 2000 a 2005 it had an idle air control valve and you've got to keep that sucker clean or it'll you know your idle start to get really weird it'll rev higher it'll just kind of feel kind of shaky it so that's another those are kind of juice to maintenance items that you're gonna want to look at on these cars after 2006 they got rid of that and the air pump so you don't have to worry about it now on to the mechanical aspects of the s2000 and this underbody section is one of the most important parts of this car so many people get hung up on paint color swirl marks as they're scratches on the bumpers all of that is aesthetics if this underneath is junk well you can walk away and the first thing I'm gonna tell you is if you're looking at it if you're looking for a used s2000 at a dealership and you're out of state which is gonna happen often talk to the salesperson let them know you want to talk to the service manager have them put it on a lift and have him send you pictures from his cellphone or whatever and email it to you I've done this on every single car I've bought out of state and it's almost been a non-issue every single time and there's some things that you're gonna look for right away so let's take a look and we're gonna start at the front part of the car now if you're buying it from a private party or a dealership and they're telling you garage kept never driven in winter it's super easy to tell on a Honda like this like I said at the start it's a 90s Honda if it's touched snow and salt for even a year or two or been owned on a coast with the ocean breeze you're gonna see surface rust all over everything on here your control arms are all cast steel so they're gonna be just covered in this lovely rustic look which this car doesn't have your control brakes or your braces for the subframe the coating will be all stripped off and there'll be rust all over all of this including the subframe the subframe is one of the easiest things that will rot immediately if you see rust all over this you know it was driven in winter or is it was exposed to a lot of salt the subframes rot out that's one of the first things that rot out and the second thing you're gonna see which is really common with older Honda's is you want to inspect the brake lines the hard lines which is right here it's wide open you really don't even need to get the car in the air you just stick your head if you see these lines any rust anywhere on them you know that it was exposed to salt same thing with the the plastic carrier that takes the brake lines all you have to do is look through here if you see rust on these lines it's gonna be a pain in the ass to replace brake lines are a pain same thing with fuel lines so if you don't see any rust on here anywhere I'm pretty much surface rust or anything you're golden and despite you can see the front lip of this bumper being all damaged on the car I chose I was ok with that because the underbody I knew was never driven in winter now the next thing you want to look at is suspension components and one of the most obvious things where you can pick up on damage right away is if the cars old are you a upper control arm that is got surface rust on it and it looks like you know old and then you have a shiny bright lower control arm and everything else is rusted around it you know that one of those suspension components were replaced easily look at the nuts and the bolts are a couple of them shiny and other arm all corroded or just rusty looking it's an easy way to pick up on things the next thing you're gonna wanna look at is the brake system have the brakes been modified does it still have the factory dust shield around the brake rotor a lot of times with aftermarket kits you have to cut the dust shield off the dust shields missing you know that the brakes were likely modified are there holes in the fender lining up front where somebody ran brake ducts and again this is up to you what's important what's not but it's things to look at now once you get towards the middle part of the car you want to look at the engine oil pan and the transmission case is there any scraping is there any noticeable damage to the cooling fins do the drain plugs and the fill plugs have washers or crush washers is there any leaf leaks from the clutch slave cylinder and this line from the bleeder any of that make sure all the brake lines look like they're in good condition no bends no breaks make sure all that looks clean one of the most obvious things to check and I talked about this earlier is oil filters take a look at it you should see a blue fill tech s2000 oil filter which looks like this the PCX or the one five four zero zero it's a specific filter for this car from Honda it's a little bit bigger than the generic one that a lot of people switch to if you see this big boy you know somebody probably took more care of it this is kind of the more generic Honda filter if you see some shitty Walmart oil filter it's again you don't know what the main maintenance was like on here now the next part to look at is kind of the underbody and the underbody coating is any of it chipped off is there just huge chunks taken out anywhere that's a pretty big red flag that it's been off-road or been curbed you know do all the panel's look straight does the coating look pretty even as much as it can be does the exhaust look like it's ready to rot off or fall off you know a little bit of surface rust on flanges is good if the hardware the spring Hardware connecting the cat to the header looks pretty good you know that you know this thing wasn't again in salt the back half of the s2000 now this is important much like the front you want to spend a lot of time looking at the suspension this entire setup is all cast steel the subframe is stamped steel and there is a subframe brace here that is also stamped steel now if somebody's asking top dollar for an s2000 its pristine and you get under here this subframe is all rusty the subframe bolts are rusted this brace is rusted the lower control arms look like disgraceful that is not a top-dollar car it's been in a ton of salt and it's easy to tell right away and the other thing much like the front is the suspension since one of the most frequent accidents are damage to the s2000 is somebody spinning this out into a fixed object or a curb take a look at the wheels take a look at both sides do the control arms look newer on one side versus the other if they look really shiny and new on one side not on the other it's a red flag keep your eyes towards the shiny side look for damage around the frame the body and the subframe all of that you can tell pretty quickly the half shafts or another thing that you could easily tell if one half chef has a ton of rust on the flange where it connects to the differential and the other doesn't well you know that one of the half shafts have been replaced now this doesn't mean it's been in an accident it might have been just worn out or you know but you have to use you do your due diligence here to do the inspection right alright last but not least under here pretty common-sense stuff check for leaks check for leaks check for leaks is the radiator leaking of their coolant is there oil dripping from the pan or the trans or the rear differential you're gonna see this stuff look up by the oil filter sandwich plate is there oil residue there or higher up you should be able to get up there with a flashlight if you don't see anything you're gonna be pretty safe if you're choosing a car that's lower price with a ton of rust you're gonna want to look at like bushings you're gonna want to look at the engine mounts do they look totally destroyed you know the other thing to note is since the alignment is all adjustable here those bushings 10 to get really rotted out namely as soon as there's rust under here so you're gonna have to account you know account for replacing that either replacing the control arms or replacing the bushings it's one of those things you're gonna want to look at and honestly unless you're looking at a total bargain-basement car I would stay away with what stay away from one of these that has any amount of rust on subframe or brake lines I would just walk away from it personally now in the review video I talked about a lot of the changes made between ap1 and ap2 a lot of the ap1 owners can modify that car with the AP two parts no issue one of the main things that Honda changed in 2002 was they added new oil jet bolts to prevent oil starvation which they were having an issue with on the earliest 2000s that were under high load so if you have a car from 2000 to 2002 early 2002 you're gonna want to check to see if the oil jet bolts or a place they went from a two-hole design to a four-hole design and again it's just worth pulling the oil pan to see if it was done if the person you're buying it from doesn't know now before I close out this video there's a few more things to talk about some of it has to do after you own the car one of the last things to do to inspect this is to check for any play on the wheel bearings or the hubs so you don't want to get this in the air you want to push and pull and rotate and see if there's any just real beds sticking in the wheel when you turn it namely in the back you want to push and pull on that wheel if there's a lot of play or clunking obviously check to make sure that the wheel is tight first if there's any play you might have a bad wheel bearing and you will hear that during driving now the back rear wheel bearings are typically something that goes out pretty common it's a pain and they ask to replace them it's definitely more of an issue on cars that are tracked driven but Billman who I talked about who created he's a mechanic who created a timing chain tensioner for this car he recommends over torquing the rear axle nut so that's something that you would want to do after you bought the car just double-check it it's just an extra insurance policy to keep those bearings fresh and not you know burning up the other thing you want to do this car's super sensitive to fluids and again I don't really I'm not a big proponent of telling you what fluids use but for engine oil everybody's gonna say have their own fluid just make sure it's changed change it regularly transmission I always use the updated Honda transmission fluid which was changed and I think like 2008 it's the green label manual transmission fluid it works extremely well in this car but it does not last a long time if you have weird transmission issues on your test drive and you weren't sure when it was changed that would be the first thing I would do is change the trans fluid I got this car it had zero trans issues put new Honda trans fluid in perfect did four track days I wouldn't go any gear sometimes sometimes it feels like it would want to pop out drain the trans fluid it was perfectly clear drained it put new trans fluid in trans problems one away every gear was smooth again so it's really sensitive to heat it's really sensitive to fluid and it's something you're gonna want to know about this gravity bleed the clutch you know you shouldn't have to believe the clutch just gravity you bleed it I bleed my brakes once a year but I use endless brake fluid which really should last forever unless you're you know doing something stupid again fluids fluids fluids in the back I use modal dip fluid but again just make sure you use the right spec for your driving conditions all right you're armed with as much information as I can provide you now it's time to take a test drive the first thing like every car does it drive straight is the steering wheel turned does it pull when you're driving does it pull when you brake you know notice those things this is one of Honda's first electronic power steering racks there is no feel it is very numb that's normal one of the biggest things about driving this car is the transmission so let's cover that now one of the most important things when you set off in an s2000 for the first time is to understand the way the manual transmission is they design this to give you direct mechanical feel to the transmission which is extremely rare in modern cars most every single manual transmission assembly is now some type of cable operated shifter which means there's a cable linkage to the gearbox which is mostly to reduce vibration you don't feel anything you really don't feel the mechanics of the gearbox here you will when you first start this car out you want to drive it when the vehicle is room temperature or cold you know whatever cold is you don't want it warmed up because you won't get a good sense of how the transmission is in terms of where and just if there's any issues when you start out you want to go extremely slow and and I'm gonna tell you this it doesn't matter what model year you have these this transmission operates best when there's a lot of heat in it so when you go out and you go in the first second you want to be very deliberate in your gears not shifting hard you want to shift at a low rpm for those first 10 to 15 shifts you kind of want to baby it because it's gonna feel really nachi and it might even feel like it's grinding to you if you're not used to this so it's a good habit to wait for the transmission to warm up before you start really forcing it and if it feels not you when it's cold for those 10 15 you know first 10 to 15 shifts that is completely normal what is not normal is for it - totally grind or not going to gear or fight you going into gear if it's doing that when it's cold it's a big red flag once this thing's warmed up I'm talking like 15 minutes after like 50 shifts you should not have any noticeable grinds or hesitation 1st through 4th at all even down shifting you want to check this and the other big thing unlike a lot of cars is you do not want to skip ship this transmission so if you're revving out 3rd gear like in a lot of cars if you rev it out to 8,000 rpms you're like yeah you know what I'm gonna go into sixth or fifth it's really common for people to wear out the synchros in fifth and sixth gear on this car because they they rev it out and they think they can shift into the higher higher gears you do not want to do that if you rev out there you want to go into fourth fifth sixth with that said that's why you also want to check out fifth and sixth gear on the highway you want to make sure those upper gears are not grinding if you have any grinds in those gears chances are you have worn synchros there and again this is a very finicky gear box and it's something you really want to pay attention to when you're driving once it's it's got a lot of heat into it it should be buttery smooth if you have any gear directions popping out of gear you all pretty much want to walk away because you're gonna need a transit we're all on this thing now you know more about the transmission let's cover the engine when this starts cold much like many fond ofor poppers there's a little bit of valve chatter that's pretty normal for this car and once it warms up you shouldn't hear any valve chatter if you rev it you shouldn't hear any chatter at all and if you do either it needs a really good valve adjustment or there's something wrong be very alert of that timing chain tensioner if you if the car is heated up or cold and you blip the throttle at a low rpm in neutral and you hear a rattle coming from the front right side of this car could be the timing chain tensioner is going bad you shouldn't hear a rattle now once the vehicle is warmed up I'm gonna say this if you're coming from another car that has higher horsepower that has torque or as a turbo or forced induction you're gonna wind this thing out from about zero or you know a thousand rpms to 6,000 rpms and you're gonna seriously think that something's broken and I'm not kidding you I even get back into this car after driving some press cars with real power and I think there's something wrong with it that's how little power it makes and no torque that is normal for this car and I'm telling you after you get over 6,000 rpms or the VTEC range for a p1 or a p2 you should hear a distinct switchover and all that power starts to build in that 3,000 rpms if you can't deal with that and you can't deal with keeping the RPMs in that range this is not the car for you but once it's there it should be smooth it should feel powerful it should feel quick and you'll have a lot of fun rowing through the gears if there's hesitation at the high end or there's bucking or surging there's something wrong you should not have a weird or low P idle this does have a rougher idle but it shouldn't be surging between like 8,000 or 800 rpms to 1500 rpms or back down it shouldn't be hanging at 1300 rpms or that either it could be throttle bodies dirty it could be the idle air control valves dirty PCV numerous things like that but it should have a consistent idle even though it might just feel a little rough last thing to note is you sure hear any noises from the rear end you shouldn't hear any knocking or any knocking from the suspension you shouldn't hear any grinding or weirdness from the differential on the rear end on a stock ride height if you hear any growling really bad in the rear could have a problem with the diff but for the most part the only noises that should be weird is just the shitbox interior rattling the plastics the top the hinges you know the visors that stuff will creak but mechanically this car should feel pretty solid that's it for this video part three will cover modifications and what to look for and what to do and what not to do I really hope this helps this is educationally mostly it's not for entertainment take care [Music]

Channel: savagegeese

Views: 349,351

Keywords: Honda, cars, s2000, typer, VW, golfr, gti, Subaru, WRX, STI, Civic, Porsche, Mustang, Camaro, diy, car shopping, best used sports car, affordable sports car, help, vlog, bad, pros, cons

Id: c81zaH_LqqI

Length: 38min 52sec (2332 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 10 2018