New ride: Vt3k content

Well, Ol' Blue's time finally came to be put out to pasture. Believe it or not, it was a really hard decision for me, but in the end the choice was pretty clear.

We had some pretty fun times together, and the car's been really good to me; dead reliable. Never left me on the side of the road once, and thinking about it, I never once got a ticket in that car. Got pulled over a bunch, but never got a ticket. I put 55000 miles on the clock too (sold her with 88,000)... got a lot of seat time. Started autocrossing w/ her too. I hope like hell she goes to a good home. I'll miss her, that's for damn sure.

Anyway, out with the old...:

...And in with the.... older???? She's an '02 S2000 with 55,000 miles, Sebring Silver. The car runs great and is an absolute blast to drive. Needs better tires and maybe a bigger front sway bar.

Friggin suite. You ever do anything with the Toyota?

Still tryin to get it running right. The yota's kind of taken a back seat to building the engine on the Miata right now. Once the new engine's done and in the car, work will continue in earnest on the Celica

Nice! I'm guessing that's not the mfg. buyback car you were looking at?

LOL no, this is not the buy-back car. After continuing to find dead-end after dead-end doing the leg work on why it was bought back, I got pretty much no where. Went and checked this one out on Tuesday at a dealership a lot closer than the other one actually. It had lower miles, and they wanted nearly the same money it, so it really wasn't a question.

OK, first things first - this is not a FWD vehicle. The vehicle dynamics are much different. I've owned an 02 S since it was new and have loved it, but all the "boys" who come from FWD vehicles immediately begin complaining about the oversteer.

The S doesn't oversteer any worse than any RWD car with power I've ever driven, but it rotates the rear under different inputs than does a FWD. With FWD cars you have to work to get it to rotate so when you give a RWD car the same heavy handed approach it rotates more than you are expecting.

A RWD car does it differently and requires a different set of reaction patterns. I've driven FWD cars since the 80's and my brain is still hardwired for RWD cars. In a pinch my hands and feet just do the right thing for a RWD and absolutely the wrong thing for a FWD.

Now you might be a world class driver and this is all elementary to you, it's just that I've seen too many noobs to RWD get into trouble so I thought I'd bring it to your attention before you mess up your new baby.

I appreciate the input... but I've had the STS2 Miata for 2 years now that's given me a lot of experience with tail happiness. It is a little worse than the miata, but it's nothing terribly crazy.

Alright, I finally got around to adjusting the clutch pedal. It was basically a ton of play, finally disengaging the clutch right before you hit the floorboard. I'm not even sure I was getting enough pedal to fully disengage the thing to be honest. Last night I decided to contort myself under the dash and make it right, and I think I got a little over zealous. The throw was right, but the engagement was way up at the top. After driving it most of today, I got back home and lowered it just a tick and it's flippin perfect now. And yes, I left a touch of play in the padal to made sure it's not constantly engaging the clutch.

I think i remember the 1st gen s2000's SP1's? had some problems with tail happiness. I think that Honda went back and changed the recommended rear aliment for the car and that fixed the problem so you might want to ask your dealer or look into that.