Todd's new S2000

[Toddxxx]

Mind the language please. There are children here...

sorry shak. please forgive me

[Timmy_B]

No posts for a while so here's an update.
Car was parked after my last trackday and not touched again.
Got the hose and and hosed it down on Friday and went to take it for a drive.
Battery was dead (expected), jump started the car and drove around for 20 or so mins. Pulled into the servo to get air and fuel and car wouldn't turn back on. Jump started it again and drove home then it died in the driveway. Pushed it away and left it.
Battery shows 14.4V when running but 6.2 when off.
Bought a trickle charger so I'll use that this weekend and go from there.

Fucking shit box Hondas! :P

would you think about killswitch?
I left mine for 7 weeks without start up and got it fired up first go.

[Toddxxx]

would you think about killswitch?
I left mine for 7 weeks without start up and got it fired up first go.

Kill switch would be pretty cool but I've bought a trickle charger now so too late. Maybe something to look at in the future.
Do you have a small lightweight battery as well?

[eskimo_firefighter]

Drive your car on the street more often Toddxxx, problem solved.

[Toddxxx]

Drive your car on the street more often Toddxxx, problem solved.

That and trickle charger! (Y)

[Timmy_B]

Kill switch would be pretty cool but I've bought a trickle charger now so too late. Maybe something to look at in the future.
Do you have a small lightweight battery as well?

Yep, dry cell FTW.

I found once I added additional earths it became better for cranking

[Toddxxx]

So I had the battery plugged into the trickle charger all night while still connected to the car. The CTEK was silent and continuously flashed on stage 1 and never left that stage.
I checked voltage with a multimeter and it showed 3.8V going up to 4.1V to 4.5V and back down. This didn't seem right so I unbolted the battery from the car and straight away the voltage jumped to 6.9V.
I plugged the battery back into the trickle charger out of the car and watched it go 6.8V to 10.2V to 11.4V and the CTEK now stay illuminated on stage 1 (no constant flashing) and makes a beeping and humming noise.
I assume it is now pumping charge into the battery correctly and when plugged into the car there is some sort of parasitic drain on the battery.
I recently had a few issues with my car alarm/immobiliser and just switched it off to stop it going off as soon as I started the car (kind of a I'll fix it later type deal) so I'm thinking maybe that could be the issue?

Anyone who uses CTEK chargers care to tell me what the charger does and look like when it charges your battery (flashes? Makes noises? Etc)

If it get home from work tonight and the battery isn't charged I'll just go buy a new normal sized battery tomorrow and be done with it. No more pc680 and weight savings but at least I won't have issues with it dying in between drives

[felixR]

Anyone who uses CTEK chargers care to tell me what the charger does and look like when it charges your battery (flashes? Makes noises? Etc)

No flashes and no noises with a normal sized battery still connected to the car.

The dead flat battery would charge overnight and the car will start up no problem in the morning.

[Toddxxx]

No flashes and no noises with a normal sized battery still connected to the car.

The dead flat battery would charge overnight and the car will start up no problem in the morning.

Hmmm well it was continuously flashing when still plugged into the car but now it stays solid so that's a good thing. Hopefully get home this afternoon check it and battery will have chatged. Need to sort out the drain in the car though

[gunpoons]

Mate Ive had some similar problems, also got a pc680. My S is off the road so the battery went dead. I took it out of the car and put it on the ctek but it wouldn't charge, so I put it back in the car and jump started it, let the car idle for about half an hour while I had a beer with my neighbor, stopped the car put the ctek on, ctek showed full charge!
Took ctek off, left car overnight, went to start car in the morning and battery was dead, jump started car and ran it again for over half an hour but battery wouldn't take any charge.
I'm going to pick up a new normal old battery next week


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[gunpoons]

I did read somewhere in the booklet that came with the pc680 that most standard battery charges won't be able to re-charge a completely dead battery


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[Toddxxx]

Sounds exactly like my situation lol
Except I got home this afternoon and battery was fully charged in stage 5

Going to throw it in the car now and see what happens

[Toddxxx]

I was able to pick up a Spoon Sports X brace from a friend a few weeks ago. The X brace is for the front subframe and ties it together to stop flex and apparently it improves handling feel quite dramatically. I got the bar for cheap so it was a great opportunity to grab it and test it out at my upcoming track day on Monday. Hopefully the X brace will tie together well with my Ultra Racing rear brace that i already have on the car.

Here's where it sits once on the car (not my car)


The brace is meant to come with socket cap screws but my friend never received any resulting in it never being fitted to his car. Researching online i found that 35mm/40mm bolts are used so after a quick trip to Nepean Boltmaster in Seven Hills i had four 40mm bolts readyWhile to install the brace.
While installing i found that the 40mm bolts felt too short as i had to install using force and the allen key right from the start. This is a recipe for disaster so another trip back to Boltmaster and i swapped for some 50mm bolts and was able to start threading by hand (much better) and the brace was installed in 5mins.

While i was under the car i took the rear Ultra Racing brace off and gave it a new coat of black spray paint to freshen it up a bit.

Here's the two braces together


So far with just a couple days of street driving i haven't noticed a difference in driving but to be honest i didn't expect much on the street so I'm still very keen to test at the track.


**UPDATE 30/05/16**

Had a chance to test out the brace at my track day on Monday. The original plan was to remove the X brace for the morning sessions then reinstall it for the afternoon sessions but a combination of minus 100 degree weather and laziness just meant that I left the brace installed all day.
Once the weather warms back up a bit I might give this another shot and test it out back to back but for now I'm quite confident I've done enough track days without the brace to be able to tell the difference.

Okay onto the driving impressions.
Some more street driving has continued to show zero change in feel as anticipated so don't grab this brace if you only street drive your car.

At the track on Monday the front end of the car felt 'zippier' than usual and my turn in felt a lot sharper. This may not just be because of the brace or it could also just be a total placebo effect.
On warm up laps when I try to warm the tyres up and use more sudden steering movements the car seemed to respond more which was nice.

While not a massive difference I'll keep the bar on the car for now and test some more. I feel like this bar would be good for an auto X user or someone who races on a short tight track where quicker steering inputs are used.
I really wish I wasn't so lazy on Monday now and actually swapped the bar out but oh well will do so next time.

[Toddxxx]

Just in time for my track day tomorrow my new battery turned up on Thursday.
I got a Fullriver HC20 this time round. Same size and weight as the odyssey PC680 but has slightly specs and is almost half the price!!! Cant beat that really.



Bit of a spec comparison between the two

PC680
CCA - 170
PHCA - 520
20HR (Ah) - 16
Reserve capacity - 24mins
Price - $250

HC20
CCA - 220
PHCA - 680
20HR (Ah) - 20
Reserve capacity - 28mins
Price - $140

As you can see the CCA is a little better on the HC20 which is important on the cold starts after a few days of being off and of course the price difference. I also picked up a CTEK 3.8 trickle charger to use in the instances where i dont drive the car for a while.
Swapped over and fired up first time (Y)

Got my alignment on Friday (same specs as usual) and all ready to chase 1:09.0 tomorrow!

[Timmy_B]

Just in time for my track day tomorrow my new battery turned up on Thursday.
I got a Fullriver HC20 this time round. Same size and weight as the odyssey PC680 but has slightly specs and is almost half the price!!! Cant beat that really.

same battery as me

I also met one of the distributors for fullriver who said "If it ever shits itself or dies, let me know and I will replace it for free"
So he must be pretty confident in the product