the s2k blog

In the last few days, the weather here in Southern California has been beautiful, low to mid 80’s, with the Winter sun that hangs low and as long as its not directly invfront of you makes for great top-down driving. Just a few weeks ago we were having all kinds of inclimate weather here, and I hadn’t washed the S for almost a month since it seemed almost pointless. This last Sunday though, my s2k buddy Eric and I spend half the day washing and detailing our cars and it’s been great zipping around like this in the middle of Winter. I can’t imagine ever living anywhere other than SoCal.

I do have a couple of projects in store though. My seat belt on the driver’s side isn’t retracting very well and I need to fix or replace that and I’m also thinking about changing the suspension so I’ll be sure to take lots of pics and do a writeup on both of those when I get around to it.

My last car was an Acura Integra and I drove that thing everywhere. I live in the Los Angeles area, and I drove it to San Francisco a few times, San Diego multiple times and Las Vegas more times than I can count. The car was very reliable and got great gas mileage and I put almost 20,000 miles a year on it.

With the Integra gone and my s2000 my daily driver, I’m still only putting about 10,000 miles on it a year. San Diego is about the furthest I’ve driven it, and road trips usually are done in the wife’s Accord now. Since it’s only a two-seater, if there’s more than 3 people going somewhere we usually take someone else’s car. If we’re ever going somewhere where I know there’s going to be terrible parking or if we’re going to a shady area I also would rather not have my S with me. Of course I enjoy the S more than any car I’ve ever owned, but yeh, I do a lot less driving with it.

How many miles do you put on your S a year?

For the first time since the beginning of the year, it’s been too cold or rainy to drive with the top down. I remember in early Spring, a shower snuck up on me when I was on the freeway, but at 70+ MPH the rain just follows the airfoil over the windshield and I didn’t get wet until I got off the freeway and stopped to put the top up.

But here I am complaining while at least half of the country has too much snow or ice to even pull the s out of the garage. I really can’t imagine ever living someplace other than sunny Southern California. One nice thing that I’ve noticed is that with the top up, the cabin of the s2000 is so small that when I turn on the heater it warms up the entire car quite quickly. I remember it taking forever for the cabin to get warm in my old integra. I’ve also noticed in the rain that the s is much more tail happy than usual, and I’m sure my rear tires that need to be replaced aren’t helping the matter. Drive safe everyone and have a happy holiday!

As a follow up to my earlier post about the s2000 in television and movies, here’s another one to add to the list. Not that I saw this movie or am at all inclined to, but I have to give it a little more love now that there’s an s2000 in it:

This is also the second pink car, after Suki’s pink s2000 in Fast and the Furious 2.

It seems that around the holidays bad drivers get even worse. So to vent my rage, I thought I’d list my top 10 pet peeves of bad drivers.

1. Drivers that don’t use their turn signals, and drivers that leave them on.

2. Drivers that don’t have their headlights or fog lights aimed properly and end up pointing right at eye-level.

3. Drivers that toss their cigarettes out the window, I’m in a convertible damnit!

4. Drivers that cut in front of me and immediately brake because of traffic or a red light.

5. Drivers that make illegal left turns against heavy traffic that back up the lane until they can make their illegal turn.

6. Drivers that have squealing alternator or other worn belts, and drivers that don’t change their brake pads even when the warning indicator is scraping.

7. Drivers that park door-dingingly close to you.

8. Drivers whose car coughs out black smoke in between every gear.

9.Drivers that use their brake for no reason on the freeway (usually automatic drivers)

10. Drivers that blast loud music and don’t have the courtesy to turn it down a notch at a stop light.

/Rant

I went to the LA Auto Show last weekend, and front and center in the Honda area was the good ‘ole s2000. For the 9th year in a row with pretty much the same body style it’s had since it started it was getting lots of attention and looks.

After realizing it was too difficult to have anything in the trunk without worrying about damaging my subwoofer, I decided to get a cover for it. Most of the covers are grills with very thin holes and everything I read suggested that not enough air would be able to move fast enough and that it would change the sound of the woofer. So I opted for the matching Pioneer cover that fit perfectly and came with the extra long mounting screws.

It’s a little taller than i’d like it to be, and does make my trunk just that much smaller, but at least I don’t have to be as careful when I put things in there now.

After looking at a lot of different options for a sub enclosure for the s, I decided on an enclosure that goes in the center of the trunk. It requires you to remove the tool tray, however the tools still fit under the enclosure, which i wrapped in a towel so they wouldn’t rattle. The fit is pretty clean and I opted to have it cut for a 10″ subwoofer since the area is only .88 cubic feet. The Pioneer subwoofer I bought says that it’s designed for .7′ to 1.3′ box so I thought it would be fine, but it sounded pretty sloppy and too small for the sub. It might be because the box is built with two chambers, so I put in about 2/3lbs of polyfil and that cleaned the sound up nicely.

I also dynamatted the cutouts in the top of the trunk to kill the rattle that the sub was making since it faces directly up.

Here in California, this Saturday at 2AM, clocks get turned back, so it’ll seem like we get an extra hour of sleep on Monday morning (and will also seem like we’re staying an hour late at work). I really don’t like these short days when it’s just barely light when I go into work and dark when I get out, but that’s the way it goes. At least the s2000’s clock is pretty much the easiest and most straight forward car clock to adjust of any car I’ve ever seen.

Leftlane news has released some more artist renditions of possible s2000 successors. I really like the looks of these renditions more than others I’ve seen as they take some clear design cues from the current Honda s2000. The profile looks very similar to the current generation S, and the aggressive front end is very attractive. The rear end looks like a strange cross between a 6 series/solstice/new Accord coupe but overall I’m really liking the car. The wheels in the rendering are hideous, but there’s no way they’d ever make it to a production model anyway.

The article calls this the 2012 Honda s3000, but is Honda really going to keep the current generation s2000 for 12 years? It’s entirely possible. The NSX remained pretty much the same for 15 years.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/honda-s3000.html