S2000 woes :(

[spaz]

Being a lovely brother I thought I'd give my sister a lift to the airport today, so off we trot to Luton, it's lovely weather so down comes the roof for the jaunt home where everything is it's usual nice and lovely self...

...until I'm several streets away from home, the car just cuts out trying to pull out of a junction as if I've stalled, but no jerk, just turns off. I try and start it up again and nothing the first time, try again and it bursts into life hurrah!

As I then pull away there's a very nasty knocking noise from the front, I've heard that noise from somewhere before...., I pull onto my drive, open the bonnet and give the throttle a jab and the sound is definitely from the engine and sounds like it could be from the bottom end

I check the oil and it's more or less at the same level I topped it up to last week at between 3/4 and full. I've barely used it recently due to the weather and now this happens, the only shred of hope I have is that because I bought it from a Honda dealer it comes with a 12month guarantee and can only pray it's covered as I seriously cannot afford to repair it myself right now.

What could the cause of this be? I've done approx 3000 miles since buying it early December and while I do enjoy a good drive as and when I can 95% of it's use has been up and down the M1 to my girlfriends place in York.

Just gutted to be honest and have had to vent somewhere!

 

[spaz]

That's interesting to read, might have a look at the spark plugs once my dads home so I've got some tools at my disposal...

 

[spaz]

did your sister make it to the airport?

as for the car

She did, everything was fine until I was very near home.

Take a car out with an identified issue, do more damage and expect it to be covered under warranty... That doesn't sound especially sensible to me, it's giving them an absolute excuse to not have to repair the car, namely carelessness.

Yeah and after seeing your first post too, leaving it will be best I think, "you you took the spark plugs out did you, how do you know you didn't put them in right" etc.

I just feel I've got a fight on my hands with them over it, but perhaps because my last car was a Renault and they tried anything and everything to get out of a claim I'm just expecting more of the same! Car is now just going to sit on the drive as it is and see whether they can come collect it, if not I should be able to trailer it there, I don't wanna risk the drive to Hemel just incase!

 

[spaz]

Sorry about the delay in replying, didn't get chance to yesterday and busy with work today. Called Honda Assist this afternoon and should be here by 4.40pm apparently, will see what happens after that.

Mechanical tappets. Hydraulic tappets wouldn't work at 9000rpm.

Is the car a JDM?

No it's a UK car, do the JDMs tend to be more troublesome??

 

[spaz]

Just had a fun few hours, was expecting some bloke in an Accord or something to turn up but was a lovely Scottish bloke from the AA.

Doesn't check anything other than the oil, starts it up and doesn't sound like anything to begin with, revs it a little and the noise starts, it was quite irregular in timing and it did sound like it was tappetty at the top end....quite why I thought it was the bottom end I can't explain (must get round to booking that ear syringing at the surgery lol...).

AA man starts proceedings to drop the car off at the nearest Honda dealer which is in Bedford and sort out a hire car for me, then asking if I want to drive there, nursing it, with him following me, so we did that, and to begin with it's not too bad, just the noise. About 3 miles into the journey I get a misfire and the noise gets significantly worse. Pull over and get towed the rest of the way, I've never been in a car being towed before, it's a very bizarre sensation!

Get to the dealer, drop it off, told they're going to look at it tomorrow. Hop back in the AA van and we're off to Luton Airport to pick the hire car up (other places were closed, this was the nearest 24hr one), got myself a lovely Peugeot 308 1.6 sport (not much is sporty about it from what I can tell, nice to enjoy squidgy suspension for once though!) and got home about 15mins ago.

Just the waiting game now where tomorrow I'll hopefully hear from them about what's wrong with it and what's happening next.

 

[spaz]

Bit of an update at last

Taken a while because it seems that the warranty is done by an external company to Honda so have been waiting for an engineer of theirs to come out and carry out their own inspection and whether it corroborates with the garages own report.

I might have misheard, will get the full report when I next pop down there, but I believe the conclusion was that the bearing had gone for cylinder number 2, which eventually worked loose and scored the crankshaft due to lack of lubrication. So in essence at some point the car was run with low oil and after a slow degredation it finally gave way.

Fortunately the garage has been very helpful, letting me know at every stage of what's happening (Stratstone Honda Bedford) and fought my case that because I've not had the car for very long that I bought the car with this problem and is being covered under warranty so also fortunately (if that's possible!) that this happened so early into my ownership as any later it'd have been an extremely hard struggle to put my case forward and get it repaired.

It's like I've been bi-polar these past few weeks, such lows of wondering where I can get the money for a new engine should the worst happen and not having it covered, to a moment of extreme jubilation that it will be repaired.

Next stage is that they're now ordering the parts now ready to start the work on it, he mentioned ordering a new block etc and I should have it back either this Friday or Monday at the latest which in my opinion is a pretty quick turnaround! My dad said to me that it'll most likely be a 'short engine', what does this consist of? More or less just the entire bottom end of the engine, with the head etc untouched? I'm guessing this is done mainly to reduce costs?

Aaaaah, a very happy (or rather relieved) Rob here looking forward to getting his lovely car back at last! I did start the process of getting my MR2 back on the road and was a bit disgusted when I took the car cover off and saw the whole interior more or less covered in this furry mould...that's another story for another day though!

 

[spaz]

It's.....ALIVE!!

Picked it back up yesterday afternoon after having lots of new engine bits and bobs, crank, block, pistons etc, tried finding out the exact cost of what it all cost and was told it was in the region of 3-4k, eek. Runs better than it ever has done and I'm even being a good boy and resisting vtec at the moment and running it in for a good few tankfuls.

So to celebrate I went to take some pics at a nice picturesque location...and failed miserably, but here are some that didn't turn out really rubbish: