Red & Black S2000 road & track toys

[Redrocket&theBBC]

Hi all,

This build thread is going to be a little different as it is a shared build thread between two mates on two different cars - one a red 2000 Ap1 S2000 and another a black 2003 Ap1.5 S2000. A bit of fun showing the progress to date and into the future of both our cars, hopefully you find it of interest and maybe you'll learn something (I know I will). Its taken a while to find the time to make one of these threads but christmas holidays was as good an excuse as any to get it started.

Firstly a teaser of my car. It is the so called 'red rocket' as below.
s2 1.jpgfront1.jpgrear2.jpg
I'll let my friend Brendan share with you his car's story.

Hopefully that keeps you interested, now a bit about my vehicular history (not that you likely care). Car wise I've never owned a Japanese car till now, my personal ownership list is as follows (all manual trans)
'85 Bmw e30 323i (2009-10)
'98 Bmw e36 318is (2011-2014)
'96 Bmw e36 M3 (2013-2016) <<<I loved this car and regret selling it BUT it also financially ruined me and took all my lunchmoney.

notice a trend? bmwfanboi3 should be the alias for this account perhaps... I was never going to sell my M3 but my financial sanity prevailed as I was "saving for a house" - so much for that! I've also been riding motorbikes as long as cars, having owned since 2009 a '89 Honda Spada 250, '05 Kawasaki zx6r (636 ninja wheelie machine) and most recently a '09 Suzuki GSXR750. I put the suzuki on the market in January 2018 and stopped riding, ever since I really missed having a wheeled speedy toy to muck around on come the weekend. My daily VW passat doesn't really have the some kick that bike had strangely so in around May I decided to start hunting for a four wheeled toy again this time to take to the track and really improve myself as a driver. It was a tiring process finding a good honest example within budget despite being willing to travel anywhere along the east coast. Initially I wanted a super clean, quite stock example but i soon realised I was chasing a unicorn at my budget so I compromised somewhat on cosmetic condition and mild mods to fit my budget better. After a few months doing a Weekly/daily/hourly/by the minute search through gumtree/ebay/carsales and inspecting/test driving several S2000s, Evos and even a Lotus Elise, I purchased my S in July 2018.

I first saw the car online on a Tuesday, test drove it Wednesday night and had the keys by lunchtime Saturday of that week. At the time it had ~151,000kms and was one of the more competitively priced S2000s on the market. By my reckoning there have been 5 owners prior to me and it had an extensive parts/service history. It wasnt a perfect car to look at; the front bar could do with a respray, both front guards had been mangled and had cracked/flaking paint after a backyard Pull/roll job and it was out of rego.

The car had a few basic mods that, overall, I was happy with as they're mostly things I would've done to the car pretty soon after purchasing anyway.

Tweaked stock exhaust - from headers back - welded in resonator or hi flow cat? then stock mid section, custom rear mufflers and stock tips. Louder than stock but a little droney at 3-4k revs no less.
PLM Tri-Y Header
K&N Filter and snorkel on stock airbox
Koyo Radiator
Buddy Club N+ Coilovers (exceeded my expectations in performance and comfort so far)
CE28N 17x9+40
DC5 Type R Momo Steering wheel
AP2 Roof with glass window
Boot lip spoiler
Carbon Skirts
Rolled guards (& horribly pulled fronts)
Braided Brake Lines

More to follow

Toby

[eskimo_firefighter]

Welcome to the forum! I'll be following this one closely.

Not many people post on forums these days, but it's good to blog this stuff to keep track of everything.

[Redrocket&theBBC]

Welcome to the forum! I'll be following this one closely.

Not many people post on forums these days, but it's good to blog this stuff to keep track of everything.

We only really recently found clubitr, and I myself was quite surprised that there is still some activity.

The idea to do a combined account was one, to keep it very active, if one of us feels lazy maybe the other will pick up the slack....or not. Two we're basically going to be doing the same events all next year with perhaps Toby doing some more Winton than I. And three, our cars are basically identical down to everything except colour, even when it comes to wheels we both now have a set of tc105's.

[Redrocket&theBBC]

I guess ill do a quick intro for myself (Brendan) but most of you have probably already seen me at winton a few times.

I bought my car back in november 2015, an 03 berlina black with approx 60,000km's, almost doubled 3 years on.
Like everyone else, I was after a clean example, maybe not totally stock but it had to be black and preferably an ap1.5, I had previously owned a 99' ap1 many years prior and could not justify the extra cost of an ap2 considering it was probably going to be thrashed, plus I think I kinda prefer the basic look of ap1's anyway.

Ended up stumbling accross the model year I was after, low km's, but the selling point was the coilovers, kw v3's which are still on the car to date, lets be honest, every s2k ends up on coils, kw's was a decent amount of money better off in my pocket.
Came on some not so aggressive te37's, and a J's 70rs dual exhaust, other than that is completely stock.

Untitled by brendan schade

Since purchasing the car it has had a few transformtions, from soft top to hard top and back to soft top, about 5 different exhausts, a failed turbo kit, few different sets of wheels and as it sits in its current form:

KW V3 coilovers
Hardrace rear toe arms
ats 1.5 way lsd
steering rack spacers
spc front & rear upper ball joints
invidia TP
ASM 70m Ti exhaust
Weds tc105n 17x9.5 +32 (daily wheels)
Enkei rpf1 17x9.5 +35 (track wheels)
Voltex type 2 with 295mm stands (track only)
No name bucket seat (possibly aldi)
Custom trackart 4 point weld in cage
cutom 25row oil cooler
Karcepts FSWB
lightweight battery
JDM rear crash bar
Urge rear 2 piece discs

And I think thats pretty much it, nothing to fancy really, with the only focus being to drive to the track, go round as quick as I can manage and drive home.

First track day planned for 2019 is at phillip island in january with both Toby and myself aiming for a 1:48 on A050's, stay tuned folks

Untitled by brendan schade

P.S
As this is a combined thread thought id would be a good idea to add a pic of both cars together, shit photo but this is all I've got atm.

[Redrocket&theBBC]

After acquiring the car I quickly found the kumho Ku31s, although with plenty of tread, were not grippy enough for my liking, so I upgraded to a set of AD08rs in 245/40/17 square. A consequential alignment dialing in 2.8deg front and 2.5deg rear camber with some to out up front and toe in for the rear was also done. Next on the list was getting the front guards fixed from their mangled state and doing valve retainers for peace of mind.


With these minor tweaks done, there was little excuse not to look into track days. The goal of getting to the track was looming on my mind and quickly joined a club and got a CAMS license within a month of ownership. I booked in to do a track day for late September at broadford. Items on the agenda were bleeding clutch&brake fluid, replacing munted OEM rear pads with pmu HC800s and installing a new fire extinguisher, all replaced week of the day.



Upon arriving at the track the most obvious thing was the massive amount of elevation change for a relatively short lap. The first, 2nd last and last corners being the most pronounced but there was not one level camber/incline free corner to the track. Scrutineering was passed no issue and it was a nervous wait to get out on track and drive!

My group was called over the PA, helmet went on, racechrono switched on and we were off! Initial impressions were amazing. The tremendous sense of width vs driving on single lane hills roads was a standout difference,which perhaps gave a false sense of security. I gave the car a few laps to come up to temp tyres and brakes before gradually putting more and more into the car. Early on I knew i was being chicken in braking zones but no need to go bananas too soon as stopping from 170 is not something I was at all consistently used to. The session was over before I knew it - time to cool things down and get back into the paddock. I was grinning from ear to ear, so happy in knowing I had bought the right car for what I wanted. In just 10 minutes I had experienced and learnt more about pushing the limits of adhesion in each axis than arguably in 10 years of driving.

A couple of sessions went by before my first spin - it was a full 360 pirouette on the exit of the after overtaking a car with blue flags, pushing to hard on a 2-3 shift and the car snapped away from me. A couple of dirty tyres but no harm done!
The rest of the day went rather smoothly, becoming more and more consistent in my lap times getting consistently in the 1:08.xx-1:09.xx range by the end of proceedings. Traffic was relatively good and the day was well organised so I certainly will be doing more days with this club.

bf5.jpgbf7.jpgbf4.jpgs2ks.jpg
Video of my best lap of the day - https://youtu.be/WoB4E-534hI


Upon review this was probably one of the best days of the year. I came away with no issues from my first track day other than a dangerously enlarged appetite for more of this expensive hobby. Getting out on the track with friends in different and similar cars alike of varying experience levels was a great way to get into track driving. We all learnt something and got home safe!

Toby

[Toddxxx]

17x9 +40 crew!

Will follow this thread also. Clubs2k ftw!

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