It's about time we had a project S2000. For years, we've received letters and e-mails asking why there could be project WRXs and project Evos, but we couldn't feature Honda's only affordable rear-wheel-drive sports car. The truth is, there is no good reason why we haven't had a project S2000 grace these pages. It's a solid sports car with a stiff chassis and great handling dynamics. The engine revs to an astronomical 9000rpm right out of the box and the F20C head has even been referred to as the 'king of heads', few tuners being able to squeeze even a drop of additional horsepower out of it. But we found out first hand why it's not quite the king.
In case you've been wondering why on earth our first modification to a platform with so many possibilities has been the valvetrain, it's because the 'king of heads' has weak crowns. If you're not into stupid analogies, read: the retainers are crap. The stock springs have a tendency to slowly grind through them, in the end resulting in hung or bent valves, or worse: the need for a new motor.
We were able to pick the car up cheaply because the previous owner managed to miss fourth gear while at the top of third and find second instead. Turns out even the king of heads doesn't like 15,000rpm. We figured we'd be opening up the head to strengthen the retainers anyway, and bought the dethroned king.
The first order of action was to get the thing to Autowave in Huntington Beach, CA. These guys have been wrenching on Hondas since you were pushing Matchbox cars around on the rug. A compression test showed a remarkable 80 per cent loss in cylinder one, with a reasonable 16 per cent loss in the other three pipes. That was all we needed to hear to give tech Mike LaPier the go-ahead on the teardown.
While Mike's shop bay became an impossible blizzard of nuts, bolts and tools, we scored a set of Ferrea dual-coil valvesprings, titanium retainers, spring seats and valve locks to mate with 16 OEM Honda valves and valve guides. Any true car geek knows that if something's coming apart, something aftermarket is going back in.
We went with Ferrea springs because they're good for 11,000rpm and they use dual springs for each valve. Under extreme conditions, these springs see to it the valves close every time, even if that means smacking aluminum 180 times a second. The titanium retainers won't be ground away over time, either. So, why all the fancy goodies but stock valves? Well, it's called the king of heads for some reason or another - and it turns out the stock sodium-filled inconel S2K valves are hard to beat. Camshafts create a similar issue - in most cars the powerband moves up, and that's fine because of the increased power, albeit at higher rpm. In the case of the S2000, that power gain is typically negligible, and it's realized at such a stratospheric rpm that the peaky nature of the engine is further accentuated, which is exactly what we don't want to do.
The main reason the F20C head is referred to as the 'king of heads' is its ability to flow air really, really well. It flows so well, in fact, that porting and polishing the head will always result in a loss of some sort somewhere on the dyno curve.
Rather than mess with an engine that has such an ominous nickname and reputation, we decided to go with a basic three-angle valve job to complement our new valvetrain. A five-angle valve job tends to be redundant and/or impossible in most modern engines, mostly because there simply isn't enough material to hack away to achieve a genuine five angles.
When the head was removed, we found that our issue wasn't the typical cracked retainer. Instead, something unique had happened, being particularly apparent on cylinder one. Seems the valves had bedded themselves deep into the head, more than likely a result of a poor valve job, which in turn likely followed the sweet third to second move the previous owner had pulled off. In addition to really screwing up the mating surface, the whacking had caused all of the valves to bend, which in turn caused all of the valve guides to be slowly ground away. Sounds like a good time, huh?
By the time the car was put back together, the battery was pretty dead - it was the original cell from the medieval year 2000, after all. So we put in a call to Optima Batteries for something with a little more beef. We decided on a Yellow Top, rated at 500 cold cranking amps that would fit right in with no modification. It contrasts with the red valve cover in our engine bay, looking like something of an exercise in Pop Art, but it definitely does the job.
The S2000 has a new lease on life with its new valvetrain, and purrs at idle like it just rolled off a showroom floor and into our hands. We're anxious to get started on round two of modifications, unfortunately another round that will be mandated by the current condition of the car - wheels and tires. We're sure there isn't supposed to be a steel reflection where the tread pattern used to be, so we'll be ringing Mackin Industries for something forged and BF Goodrich for something sticky. Stay tuned.