glagola1

Naw, I think he's just saying he doesn't like long sigs. I aggree. It doesn't really have anything to do with you. It's more general than that.

Perhaps if you are tired of answering PMs about your ride, you should not have pictures of it in your sig? I dunno.

I just think they clutter the forum and it makes it harder to browse at work when I should be drafting.

afwfjustin

I think you mean "aggrandizing"

I don't mind the sigs - I go back and forth of having my mods listed and not listed. When they are listed, I get annoyed because the list takes up 4 or 5 lines of text. When they are not listed, I do get questions quite often asking me things about my setup. Fortunately I don't mind answering them so I took my parts list down

To everyone else - I think the big mods would suffice. The little things like "Mugen sweat bands" or whatever the hell those things are, are just not that necessary but to each his own. I think if we were able to put mods in our profiles it'd get the job done quite nicely.

SheDrivesIt

E-thug!

SheDrivesIt

[QUOTE=glagola1,May 11 2007, 04:17 PM] I just think they clutter the forum and it makes it harder to browse at work when I should be drafting.

RED MX5

I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again ...

It's not how hard you drive the car, it's how you drive it hard.

I feel sorry for the people who obviously don't know what this car was designed for, but I'm not going to argue with 'em. XViper might, but that's not my style.

sodaking663rd

great post...are you a lawyer?

as others would say on this board...owned!

i've heard all of the crap before about how this engine is made to rev and it doesn't hurt to redline it...that's what it was made for. well they are tough and reliable engines but all mechanical devices have their breaking point.

RED MX5

Of course all mechanical devices have their breaking point, and the point of "how you drive the car hard" is that you're not supposed to be a dumbass and exceed those limits. I'm quite capable of determining what those limits are, and don't exceed them. Do you believe you are more capable of determining what an automobile is designed to do any better than I can? I have lots of reasons to believe that the opposite is the case, inclucing over 40 years of hard driving and working on modified cars. What's the basis of your decisions. You may well be right, but all my experience and knowledge tells me that you simply don't understand high performance cars as well as I do. Sorry to be blunt (don't mean to be rude here) but there is no really nice way to say that I have volumes of very good reasons for thinking that you're wrong.

I know for a fact that both XVIper and Billman agree with me that it is how the car is driven hard that matters, not how hard it is driven, and I know for a fact that they are correct. Are you saying that you know for a fact that they are wrong?

sodaking663rd

no i'm not saying that and i'm not trying to allude that i'm a mechanical engineer...perhaps i'm wrong and i don't mind admitting that but to me if you take an average combustion engine and run it at 3000 rpms on average the engine is working as hard as it is at say 5000 rpms. if it's not working as hard then theoretically it should last longer.
i don't have any facts to back that up though and i didn't come here for a fight.

CKit

I try to take care of my car... with the context of a car being a rapidly depreciating asset. If you don't use it proportional to the depreciation, then you're losing money.

I sure have a lot of fun and enjoyment with the car, I know it's accelerating the eventual demise of the engine, but I've driven as spiritedly and as extensively as I had time to... and I'm at 37k miles after 5 years.

If the Honda lasts 70k miles, that'll be 10 years and I wouldn't be expecting much residual value....

That being said, I set money aside to buy a new engine if need be... if that happens, then I'll keep the car for another 10 years!

If I blow an engine and upgrade the car, it'd be cheaper to replace it and upgrade it than to trade up for an Exige S or GT3.

I'd do:
Engine replacement: $7k
Tranny swap for AP2: $2k
Mooncraft hardtop: $4k
Cover seats and interior in Alcantara: $2k
Sell Comptech SC for Inline Pro high boost setup:$3k out of pocket
Finally get around to installing the Racelogic Traction Control....

This really is one of the most enjoyable cars to drive. There's something to be said about a little "rawness" in the day as a great stress reliever.

RED MX5

I'm not looking for a fight either.

Your correct about higher engine speeds resulting in higher wear, and also correct about the work load affecting wear, so I understand your thinking, and was trying not to be rude in the way I disagreed. I just didn't want to get into a long explination, becaue that often irritates or confuses people and leads to a ruckus. Not that we're having a friendly chat I'll say a little more.

The S2000 isn't really a "tough as nails" car like an old small block Camaro, and some parts can be easly damaged by certain things that wouldn't damage some other cars. People break 'em all the time trying to do things like the OP has been doing, so I don't want you to think I'm saying you can do just any old thing with an S2000 without damaging it. That is not the case AT ALL. However ...

Sports cars (roadsters) like the S2000 have a long history, and all traditional sports car owners have certain expectations. One of the things they expect is to be able to rev the engine to the red line, repeatedly, without hurting anything. That is in fact what the red line is for. Look at the tack on an AP1. 6,000 RPM is right in the middle. On the left side you are below VTEC. When you're racing you want to stay on the right side, so you stay in VTEC (because the power is greater). When you reach the red line, the tack flashes. That is your indication that it is time to shift (if you're racing, but of course going that fast on the street would be questionable at best). How do I *know* Honda wants me to rev the car all the way to the red line when I want to go fast? Well, they put gearing in the transmission that REQUIRES me to rev to the red line in first before shifting to second, because if I don't the engine will drop out of VTEC. The VTEC system is configured to remain in VTEC on the 1-2 shift, but only if you rev all the way to 9,000 RPM. The point at which parts start to fail is somewhere over 10,000 RPM.

However, there IS more wear at higher engine speeds, but the amount of wear is not excessive as long as an engine is operated within it's intended design limits. Our engines don't last as long as engines designed for lower RPM operation, but we've already seen many hard driven cars exceed 100,000 miles, and we have one member who first had NOX on the car and then changed over to a supercharger, and drove the car hard, and he accumulated around 180k miles before needing an overhaul. Now if you make a money shift (shift into a lower gear at redline rather than a higher gear) and have a mechanical over rev, the engine speeds can go beyond the point where things start to fail, so a botched shift can trash your motor, but the ECU has a rev limiter that will not let you over speed the engine under power. You can in fact let the engine ride the rev limiter for short periods without doing any harm. You can blow out the differential or burn up the clutch without ever doing a burnout, but we have people here who have done hundreds if not thousands of burnouts without trashing their differential or clutch. There are ways to do these things that do not over stress any part of the car, but if the driver blows it he can very easly break things (or crash, which is even worse).

Will your car live longer if you never take it over 6,000 RPM? Maybe. The way you maintain the car will probably have a bigger effect on engine life. Our cars have things like abbreviated piston skirts which are specifically designed to work at high revs, so I'm not absolutely sure that you would get a longer engine life if you took it really easy on the car. LOL, your tires and gasoline will amost certainly go further, and I think you'd probably see a longer time before the engine neeed an overhaul, but I'm not certain of it because there are so many other factors.

I'm not trying to tell you how to enjoy your car or how to treat it, and I don't want to encourage anyone to try the kind of stuff the OP does because it CAN break your car, and you can enjoy an S2000 in any number of ways. One of the wonderful things about the car is that below VTEC, it's a mild mannered commuter car, and it's perfectly suited to more casual driving. People who understand the car well enough have shown that you can do all sorts of "crazy" stuff with the car without hurting it, but cars vary, and drivers and skill levels vary, so unless somebody knows exactly what they are doing, and is willing to pay for any mistakes they make, then they don't need to be doing anything other than treating their S2000 gently. I treat mine with *respect*, but that does not mean that I don't drive it for all it's worth. It just means that I take care of it the same way I take care of my family.

FWIW, my S2000 has proven to be much tougher than I originally expected.

It's all good, Sodaking663rd. I just don't want new or prospective owners thinking they can't buy an S2000 and treat it like any other sports car.