Earlier this year I bought a project s2000. It seemed like a great idea at the time, I mean who wouldn’t want a 800+hp S2000? I got everything in place to start working on it, going so far as installing a two post lift in the garage (which I don’t regret in the slightest BTW) to make dropping the motor easier. By then it was summer, the roads were dry, and since the car ran I decided to take it out for a few pulls just to see what I was in for.
It was terrible.
First off were all the drive-line mounts. Solid everywhere. I’m not one to usually care about NVH, hell my FR-S is mostly spherical suspension bushings, but this was bad. Noticable vibration at all RPMs, enough to rattle the interior pretty hard. Plus there was loud drone in the interior. The solid mounts worked with the open exhaust to make the interior into a giant resonance chamber with the hardtop on.
Secondly was the clutch, the twin disk clutch was a real struggle to use in the hilly areas around my house. If I lived in a perfectly flat area I’m sure it would be fine, but I found myself stalling constantly.
Ok... so those seem relatively solvable, but they stuck in my mind and after I could never muster up the motivation to actually start work. So it sat in the garage
I gave it an honest think a month ago, and realized that even working perfectly I didn’t see myself driving it. For obvious reasons, It would be limited to dry weather usage, and being that it gets about 8 miles to the gallon, it certainly wouldn’t be a daily vehicle. I can’t think of a situation where I wouldn’t take a bike in the dry for fun runs, and I can’t think of a situation, where I would need a car, and take an s2000 over an FRS or Miata. I found that I liked the IDEA of owning this car, but the reality was that it just didn’t fit in with my usage.
I listed it for sale on a few national Facebook groups at the beginning of October. Had a few people come out and look, eventually it sold to a local who has already got further on the rebuild in two weeks than I did in 8 months.
I took some of the money and bought my dream bike a few days later.