Fun with a 2000 Honda S2000

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You won’t find the S2000 on the list of cars in dire need of an engine swap. That’s because there isn’t anything categorically wrong with Honda’s twin-cam F-series. It’s as good for as much power as your pockets are deep. And the aftermarket’s been more than gracious to it. But it’ll never in a hundred years be anything at all like Toyota’s already turbocharged and ironclad 2JZ-GTE.

For Honda lovers, that last part is about as relevant as you knowing the difference between a yam and a sweet potato. If you live for things like variable valvetrains and anything with a red R tacked onto the end of it, then the 2JZ’s cast-iron short-block and indestructible demeanor won’t mean much to you. But if you’re anything at all like Zack Leitzke, all you’re interested in is the most surefire way to a stable 1,250 hp.

Look for 1,000hp gains from any cast-aluminum container of just four pistons and rods and the upgrades list starts rivaling the length of the Old Testament. Do the same for something like the 2JZ and you can just about count off what you’ll need on two hands. Go past that four-digit mark, though, and that list just got a whole lot more complicated—no matter what sort of engine you’re talking about.

“I’ve owned my S2000 for 10 years now, and it’s gone through more phases than I think any S2000 ever has,” Zach says about the car’s initial 550hp buildup that soon transcended to 700 hp and then another four F-series blocks before mashing things up with Toyota. Zach, a fabricator by trade and founder of Tacoma, Washington’s Under Pressure Racing Development (UPRD), has been getting paid to point the TIG at things like rollcages and intercooler pipes for years, but his time at nearby Speedfactory Racing, in particular, helped shape that S2000. “At that time, the outlaw car was just breaking into the sevens on a more routine basis,” Zach says about the company’s 200-plus-mph Civic you surely already know of. “While there, I got to learn a lot more about Hondas and drag racing. With the exception of my S2000, I hadn’t really worked on many other Hondas.”

That statement isn’t really something you’d expect after taking a peek at what Zach’s come up with, F-series or no F-series. Maybe that’s because he’s been getting paid to do these sorts of things for more than a decade, and doing it for fun for a whole lot longer than that. You’d almost have to have that sort of experience to pull off the whole 2JZ-into-a-Honda thing.

To read the complete article by Aron Bonk on Super Street Network follow this link.