Aug 3, 20203 min read

Project 71-109 - Pt.1 The Fundamentals

With any new (used) car the very first thing I do is go through all the wear and tear items. No matter how well a car is taken care of there is always something that you will have to address. Now in the case of my S2k the previous owner no doubt took care of the car. He even had it detailed before I picked it up (Thank You)

Now before I get into everything I figured I should explain where the S2000 got it project name. I grew up reading and watching anime and one of my favorites of course was Initial D anime. If you don't know about Initial D spend a few minutes on youtube, funamation or where you can find it a watch it.

Well as the story goes along the main character completes against team Purple Shadow and one of the drivers pilots a blue AP1 S2k and the license plate on his S2k is 71-109. So, Project 71-109 is going to be a modern build based off of the S2000 touge monster driven by Dr. Toshiya Joshima or better know as God Arm do to his driving technique. So if anyone guessed where the project name came from congrats to you. Now lets get back to it.

After inspecting the car I did find that it was overall a very clean car but there were a handful of things that needed to be addressed. First was all the fluids, driving cross country meant that oil was first on the list. Knowing that the car was going to be a daily driver and a weekend track warrior I went with some of the top names in the business. Amsoil, Royal Purple, Motul and of course Honda.

Engine oil was handled with some 10w30 Amsoil with an OEM Honda filter and I'm not here to argue what seems to be a never ending debate on what is the "best" to use. In the past I've used everything from crap dino to Royal Purple but for Project 71-109 Amsoil is going to be what I use.

The trans fluid was swapped in favor of some Royal Purple Synchromax and back to Amsoil for the rear diff. Now with most of the fluids swapped it was time to switch over to the brakes

The brakes were in dire need of help. I found the rear pads were paper thin and were at definitely at the end or there life. The front pads were better but I found that the front rotors were completely done with grooves and a huge lip, like they hadn't ever been changed. With new pads and rotors all around it was also time to do a brake flush and get all new fluid in the system. For my daily pads I went with a set of Hawk HP Plus all around. Now these pads With a little pre-planning I was able to get in a set of braided brake lines for the front (rears were back ordered) and swap the front brake lines and do the flush at the same time.

Continuing the general maintenance I swapped a set of new plugs, changed the drive belt and changed out the intake and cabin filters.

Like most general maintenance items its and overall easy process to swap these items out. For the intake I went a K&N filter knowing that I was going to maintain the stock airbox. Now what I did do was the airbox mod that I'll give credit to LHT on. They were the first ones that I saw talking about it.

Overall you just take the panels that seem to block the airflow out and block off the little extra chamber that's just there to reduce noise. Not having a Dremel (really need to get one) I found that the next easiest way was to simply score each side of the panel with a knife and then use pliers to bend and break the panel away.

With most of the boring stuff out of the way it was time to install a few fun items, like the Vision Wide Blue Rear View Mirror I pick up from ICB Motorsports which I had to personalize a little to make it more my style. I wasn't feeling the red lettering which was just done using some red tape on the back so I peeled that off and replaced it with black from a Sharpie

I also had to change out the worn out lugnuts with a set of OEM black lugnuts off of a S2000 CR. After this simple change it really helped the stock wheels pop. After seeing how good the black looked I ordered some CR black S2000 emblems for the fenders.