Friend's S2000 445whp 295wtq (videos)

[overst33r]

Just wanted to share my friends S2000 build.

1st 2nd 3rd pull

Video 447whp 295wtq

It's a MY2000 with stock internals, except a 3mm headgasket to lower compression and a high flow oil pump. At this point he's happy with 14psi. It's plenty to get yourself in trouble with.

Impressions:

First thing that comes to mind is the sound, or noise if you will. It's just a rush of air. There is no exhaust noise if you're inside or close to the car, it's just a loud noise of rushing air. When driving it normally, the blow off valve is a nice hint to the beast lurking beneath the hood.

For those that have driven a stock S2000 you know how gutless the car is below 4-5k despite aggressive gearing. With the turbo, accelerating in a higher gear at 2-3k doesn't feel like punishment. It just gets up and goes.

There is noticeable turbo lag, but that is to be expected with a turbo this size. It hits full boost at about 5000rpm and it's just a rush of power from there to the redline. With new tires, albeit cheapos, the car will burn through second gear all the way up to 70mph, at which it's time to shift to 3rd. For those who care, the gas mileage is terrible. I averaged about 14mpg over half a tank. Granted, I was on the gas every chance I had.

Even though it has a full set of coilovers with adjustable damping, this is definitely not the corner carver it used to be because the power delivery can upset the car's balance quite easily if you're not careful. It also has a cyro-treated differential so it won't blow up as easily as the stock one on hard launches.

Overall, the car is a blast to drive, and I wouldn't hesitate to drive it daily if it had a few thousand reliable miles on it already.

 

[halik]

Stock internals? Any idea what the 3mm headgasket got the compression ratio down to? With 14psi on that motor I wouldn't be surprised if he loses a rod or two.

edit: Googles have it at 11.5:1 with the 3mm is down to 9.1:1, not too bad actually.

 

[Toastedlightly]

That seems dangerous but that sound must be one mean one!

I <3 boosted builds. Any make, any model, just give her more boost! 8)

 

[aleckz]

That's a major baby eater. Would love to drive it!

 

[zerocool84]

Spend that much money on everything else but leave the internals stock? Putting that kind of money in a car makes sense to spend a little more to bulletproof the engine.

 

[overst33r]

Originally posted by: halik
Stock internals? Any idea what the 3mm headgasket got the compression ratio down to? With 14psi on that motor I wouldn't be surprised if he loses a rod or two.

edit: Googles have it at 11.5:1 with the 3mm is down to 9.1:1, not too bad actually.

The compression ratio is around 9:1.

I believe the internals are forged from the factory.

Many people have been running 500whp+ reliably for thousands of miles with the 3mm headgasket. Some have even left the motor bone stock and just slapped on a turbo kit without even opening the engine and are running around with 400whp+. According to s2ki there's a guy in Britain who's had 400+whp on his for 30k miles without so much as removing the head.

 

[halik]

Originally posted by: mariok2006

Originally posted by: halik
Stock internals? Any idea what the 3mm headgasket got the compression ratio down to? With 14psi on that motor I wouldn't be surprised if he loses a rod or two.

edit: Googles have it at 11.5:1 with the 3mm is down to 9.1:1, not too bad actually.

The compression ratio is around 9:1.

I believe the internals are forged from the factory.

Many people have been running 500whp+ reliably for thousands of miles with the 3mm headgasket. Some have even left the motor bone stock and just slapped on a turbo kit without even opening the engine and are running around with 400whp+. According to s2ki there's a guy in Britain who's had 400+whp on his for 30k miles without so much as removing the head.

I'm sure it's all forged, just because the motor makes a ton of hp for being 2L. That set up might actually be pretty reliable, though I would've kept it at 10-12psi just to be safe. My old old eclipse came with some 14psi and 8.7:1 from the factory

 

[overst33r]

Originally posted by: zerocool84
Spend that much money on everything else but leave the internals stock? Putting that kind of money in a car makes sense to spend a little more to bulletproof the engine.

The car has a long history. The original owner built the internals, but for some odd reason never replaced the oil pump. Long story short, after my friend bought it, the car had multiple spun crank bearings and required a rebuild. Instead of paying 4000+ to rebuild the motor got another car from an auction and took the motor from that one and put it into the car you see above. Since many people have reliably run this amount of boost, he went the same route and it's running great.

 

[ballmode]

The engine should hold up, the differential, clutch, and tranny might not

 

[overst33r]

Originally posted by: ballmode
The engine should hold up, the differential, clutch, and tranny might not

Stock trannies have taken up to 400ftlbs, which is about 700whp+ if you're into numbers.

Not many people complain about tranny failures.

Clutch has been replaced and is rated up to 383ftlb.

 

[thomsbrain]

Tranny should be okay, the weak spots are synchros and the diff on these cars. Synchros won't be affected by increased power, just by poor driving. If the diff has been cyro-freezed, that ought to help out a bit. They mainly get stressed when people do hard launches, and the S2000 isn't a great launch car anyway, so many owners just never do a hard launch.

Anyway, that looks like a great build, but I bet he could increase midrange power and smooth out the torque curve by lowering VTEC engagement. Even on a stock car you can get more than 10 HP in the midrange just by lowering VTEC engagement. So that might help make the car a bit more predictable as you roll on the power in corner exits (not to mention faster in a straight line, too) by filling in that big hole around 5.5K-6K RPM.

 

[andylawcc]

sorry to hijack, but what can one do to an S2000 to make it a better corner carver without upsetting the balance; go All Motor N/A? If so, what mods?

 

[overst33r]

Originally posted by: andylawcc
sorry to hijack, but what can one do to an S2000 to make it a better corner carver without upsetting the balance; go All Motor N/A? If so, what mods?

Naturally aspirated woudl do the trick, but it would be very expensive. It would take a stroker kit, ITBs, etc to get to 300whp. For about the same, if not less, money you can have the same style of powerband with nearly the same reponse with a rotrex type supercharger. The high boost kits at 10psi make about 360whp. The power band is really smooth

dyno of KW kit

 

[thomsbrain]

Originally posted by: andylawcc
sorry to hijack, but what can one do to an S2000 to make it a better corner carver without upsetting the balance; go All Motor N/A? If so, what mods?

Well, I don't think adding power is going to make it a better corner carver, period. It already has more than enough to rotate... and rotate... and rotate...

But if you are increasing power, N/A builds and superchargers will probably both deliver smoother power delivery than turbos. You can stroke the S2000 engine using the crank from the K24 engines, to get 2.4L. It's maybe a 40 HP boost or so and power delivery characteristics stay pretty much the same. Superchargers are good up to ~380 HP at the wheels, but not likely to be CARB legal at those boost levels. IIRC, there are some ~300 whp supercharger kits that are CARB certified. I doubt there are any CARB legal turbo systems, though (correct me if I'm wrong).

edit: mariok, great minds think alike. I'll point out that there aren't any ITBs that work on 2006+ cars that are equipped with drive-by-wire.

 

[jlee]

Very nice! Does he have 1/4 times?

 

[BW86]

that thing must be a blast to drive

 

[exdeath]

Transmissions and drive train components aren't rated by horsepower, they are rated by torque. 295 ft lbs gradually building to 9000 RPM is a little more friendly to parts than 700 ft lbs instantly from 2000 RPM.

The only thing I would be concerned with is using the head gasket to lower compression; that's going to screw with the quench area and screw with detonation characteristics.

 

[exdeath]

But if you are increasing power, N/A builds and superchargers will probably both deliver smoother power delivery than turbos. You can stroke the S2000 engine using the crank from the K24 engines, to get 2.4L.

Do people actually do this or are you speaking hypothetically? That engine already has one of the highest piston velocities of any production engine... you'd be crazy to stroke it.

 

[thomsbrain]

Do people actually do this or are you speaking hypothetically? That engine already has one of the highest piston velocities of any production engine... you'd be crazy to stroke it.

Yes, people do it, and there are even some people who have achieved 2.6L (not sure what they did, maybe bored and stroked it). The 2.4L mods aren't exactly a dime a dozen, but there are plenty of them out there.

Keep in mind that the stock 2.2L AP2 engine is already a stroked design, but it has a slightly lower max piston speed than the original 2.0L because the redline was lowered to 8000 RPM from 9000 RPM. Stroking to 2.4L might result in a bit higher piston speed at 8000 RPM than the 2.0L AP1 engine at 9000 RPM, but the weak point in terms of engine speed on these engines has traditionally been the valve retainers, not pistons or cranks. Pistons are forged from the factory, IIRC, and the retainer velocities wouldn't change unless you raised the redline.

On an slightly related note, anyone driving a 2.0L S2000 who hasn't examined their retainers yet to look for cracks or slipping should do so. After an over-rev, they get damaged but continue to run fine until one day they drop a valve into the cylinder, 20,000 miles later. The AP2 design used much stronger but more brittle retainers. They pretty much either break immediately during the over-rev or hold on and survive just fine.

Obviously any mod is going to reduce reliability to some extent, though.

 

[KevinH]

Do people actually do this or are you speaking hypothetically? That engine already has one of the highest piston velocities of any production engine... you'd be crazy to stroke it.

There was a guy on s2ki that had a post on his build doing that. This was about 2-3 years ago when I still had my S.

 

[overst33r]

Very nice! Does he have 1/4 times?

Nope sorry. He's too paranoid about breaking the diff before he sells it...

 

[overst33r]

The only thing I would be concerned with is using the head gasket to lower compression; that's going to screw with the quench area and screw with detonation characteristics.

Yeah that seems to be the supportive argument for the "don't take the engine apart" camp, as well as the dynamic compression ratio staying below 8:1 on the stock engine, even though it has a static cr of 11:1.

From what I have gathered, if you want big power >500whp >18psi on these engines, a thicker headgasket is the only way to go.

On a related note, Inline pro just got their S2000 to 933whp at 38psi! I am pretty sure they are using a 3mm HG. Quite impressive considering the car was never built for boost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT59Y0JoF0I

 

[mwmorph]

Do you know what the A/R and trim turbo your friend had?

 

[overst33r]

Do you know what the A/R and trim turbo your friend had?

Man I honestly don't know. All I know is what the original owner equipped the with a HP performance kit for the S2000. I can try to find some writing on the turbo and get back to you.

http://www.hpperformance.com/hondas2000turbosystem.htm

 

[RGUN]

38psi on a non sleeved block? I doubt that will last long. What is the correct factor applied on the dyno chart you posted? Seems rather high for 14 psi.