Hello everyone and welcome. This is a Honda S2000.
And it's not just any Honda S2000 because it is my Honda S2000.
I just purchased this yesterday. It is the official new project car for Engineering Explained.
No, it isn't quite a Dodge Viper. I'll give SaabKyle credit: that's an epic
car, congratulations on getting it. But I am very excited about this. There's some
very cool engineering in this car. So that's what I want to go over in this
video, talk about kind of why I bought it. The biggest reasons why I bought it,
of course it's a two-seater, it's lightweight, it's small, and it's
rear-wheel drive, and that's a formula I've really learned to love recently after
testing out quite a few different cars. So I'm excited to share with you this
vehicle and take you along. I'm not gonna be doing any driving impressions in this video.
There's a few maintenance things that I need to do it before I really thrash it hard.
It runs and drives fine, so no real major issues, but there are a few things that I want to do with it.
I'll talk about that later, but I want to kind of dive into the engineering
because this is a really special vehicle that Honda made and they really don't
make anything like this anymore.
Alex Kersten has nothing on me!
So let's go ahead and pop the enormously long hood and have a look at the engine.
The engine is a two-liter, inline four-cylinder with dual overhead cams and the ever-popular VTEC.
It produces 240 horsepower at 8300 RPM
and about zero torque until you hit 7500 RPM, where it peaks at 153 pound-feet.
The engine screams all the way to 9000 RPM and no Honda S2000 video would be complete
without mentioning that this was the highest specific output
of any naturally aspirated production vehicle on the market when it was released
only to be dethroned by the Ferrari 458 about 10 years later
when they too decided 9000 RPM was pretty rad.
Another interesting fact about this engine is how they've incorporated
carbon fiber into the cylinder bore. Essentially the aluminum alloy is poured
over cylinder cores, which are made up of aluminum and carbon fibers and these
fibers absorb the molten aluminum. Then the cylinders are bored out, removing
most of this material but leaving a composite cylinder wall about half a millimeter thick.
This remaining layer is reinforced with carbon and aluminum fibers,
however it's still integral with the rest of the block. Honda claims this
gives it additional strength and allows for using larger cylinder bores within
the same size external engine block. The same technology is used in the 3.2-liter Acura NSX.
Keeping strength in mind, the S2000's pistons are made out of forged aluminum, a first for Honda.
From the engine, we of course move to the transmission,
which had to be designed as compact as possible since the engine is pushed so far back.
To do this, Honda kept all six close-ratio speeds and reverse on two parallel shafts to keep the design narrow.
And both of these shafts are coupled at the output end, which helps to reduce the load on
the gear synchronizers and thus allows for using smaller gears.
All of the power makes its way back to the rear wheels, where the torque is then split through a Torsen
limited-slip differential. Moving onto the chassis, obviously there was a focus
on keeping the center of gravity low. The vehicle has a 50-50 weight distribution
and you can see the engine is tucked behind the front axle, giving it a lower
polar moment of inertia, having all that mass towards the center.
It also features what Honda calls a “high X-bone” frame, which keeps the car rigid,
obviously important for convertibles, which don't have a hardtop aiding rigidity.
The frame comes in at the front on both sides, comes together in through the floor tunnel,
and then splits back out at the rear. There are of course side members as well.
One of the keys to the exponent design is that the frame rails
at the front and rear are at the same height as the center tunnel.
And Honda claims this gives it a similar torsional rigidity to a closed-top, yet better bending rigidity
than open- or closed-top vehicles.
Now with the exception of the front hood, the rest of the body is all steel.
Moving on to the suspension setup, this is an in-wheel, double-wishbone design,
called this because they've shaped the components so much of it can fit within the 16-inch wheels.
This not only helps with packaging, but is a major contributing factor
to having a low hood and low rear deck line.
There's a double-wishbone both up front and in the back. The front suspension
also has a fairly low roll center, which helps keep the wheel perpendicular to
the ground while cornering, and it minimizes suspension jacking and track width changes
while cornering, which helps with steering feel.
Now the internet judges people very quickly, so now that I've purchased my second old Honda—
this is a 2002, and I bought my second new Subaru— I've got the new Crosstrek on its way—
I'll probably be forever viewed as the Honda/Subaru fanboy,
but that's you know, what can you do? The internet's out there to judge you.
So I'm excited about this, I'm looking forward to doing some repair work on it
and then getting into some different modifications, things like that,
having a good time with it.
Hope you guys are excited about it and after this video hopefully soon sometime
I'll kind of walk around, talk about the problems with it. Overall it's in really good shape.
and I'm really excited about this.
The 2002, one of the cool things about this is that they put the glass
on the back window there. So it had vinyl before that and it was just
kind of a plastic mess that you couldn't really see through.
But I'm excited to get working on this, have some fun with it.
Thank you guys for watching. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.
Can't let people know I've been cheating all this time.
Is that an ice cream truck? Seriously?
[cough] Just got a little ... mucus popping up there.