The Roof Job (Or How Not to Spend $1000 on a new Soft Top)

Since the roof was off the car and has always had a few tears and holes in it, it was very much the time for some repairs. A new soft top cloth costs nothing short of $880 plus shipping, so finding a good place to spend a few bucs on repair would definitely pay off.

Here are two pictures of the roof, prior to checking it in.

After 8 days I received the roof back from the shop that dealt with it. First impressions are mixed feelings, especially around the work on a right side tear, but I'm still waiting to see how it will look while installed.

Patched, sewn and glued rips

Two and a half weeks in (or when you realize in how deep a shit you are)

The week starts with some cleaning. You wouldn't believe how quickly a garage gets dirty while working with a sander.

About now would be a good time to do some inventory:
see what's missing and wrap stuff in plastic.

I've been avoiding this, but one's gotta do what one's got to do.

Removed rug and the stupid "carbon-style" airbag replacement

Renault seat belt on the driver's side. No wonder it never properly sat fastened.

The above picture deserves some comment. So, the guys who repaired messed up the car previously didn't bother much to get a Honda seat belt, at least, if not the original one.

The small, dark gray spots on this fender are the first signs of corrosion. 

The Stripping Off (Or When Stuff Got Real)

After two years of owning the car with a redone motor and a crappy body, I gathered enough bravery for a more or less complete body repair. After finding the right guy for the job (more about this in another post, perhaps), I took one last photo of Alessa (that's how my S2000 is named, by the way) and handed it over to the master.

The right guy is on the left

The next step involved saying good bye to the old paint, plaster and superfluous body parts.

This door must have been changed some time. Black paint is factory paint!

The biggest surprise showed itself up soon enough on the right-rear wing area

Superfluous stuff

More superfluous stuff

Cabrio indeed

Car minus rear bumper and rear crash bar, plus cat

The paint is sanded out until the bare metal is left

The process is not always easy though

These two have behaved like a couple of bitches. Very hard to get off.

But in the end...

Since I had nothing to do all these days, I took the crash bars out for a ride. The tow thread never worked on me and that needed to be fixed.

The longer one is on from rear

First, check the thread on the bars themselves. Check.

Then take care of the towing hook. Mine had bad thread so had to be re-threaded.
Yes - that is red hot chili metal.

Lathe machine in work

Aand, done!

Chassis

The first significant procedure I did was to measure the geometry of the frame and arms using primitive means. Luckily the frame did not show any detectable skewness (by means of measuring diagonals and sides) and all I had to replace at that point were the front arms. Old arms seem to have taken a beating on every occasion.

Measuring the span of the lower front wishbones

As expected: quite a difference of about 10 mm

The new arms came at around 250$ each and the left one took me quite a long time to grab. None of the stores seemed to have it.

This solved the issue with geometry on front and for the first time in years this picture was possible:

Correct camber, caster and toe on front. The caster difference used to be 2.5 degrees

A Brief History of Mine (Intro)

I'm a guy from Moldova who's neither a fanatic of JDM, nor knows all the Mercedes line-up and specs, but does like the feel of a good car and the thrill it offers on a Sunday morning.

I purchased my Honda S2000 two years ago, which happens to have been 2014, and ever since, I believe it didn't get the treatment and flashlights it deserves. The story behind the purchase is a post on its own, but let's take it one by one.

So, the car this blog is about has been involved in a series of unfortunate events, not unlike a lot of other nice automobiles "with scars and character". Apparently, some three years after the very first purchase of this car (2006), with only about 18,000 miles on board, the owner, a dude in Kentucky, USA (or thereabout) managed to flood it and made it available for auctioned export. Now the history at this point is a little shady, but my belief is some folks from my country grabbed the offer, repaired the flood damage (pretty well actually), and sold it to another dude. All this must have taken another three years or so and right around the year 2009 this happened:

Deep damage to left door

Fired airbags, damage to right door and wing

Apparently the driver said he swerved from a dog, or a bunch of dogs. Might've been an elephant as well to me now. The damage occurred to both doors and, as I found out only much later, was significant.

Then came the darkest of times for this car: the Soroca repair. An under-qualified garage was commissioned to repair the roadster. To describe the work those guys did is a painful experience, but I'll attempt to summarize it: duct tape, plastic bags, tons of putty/plaster and a "good-enough" attitude:

Later the car was resold and, eventually, it got to my attention on a July morning of 2014. What happened next is nothing short of fucked up, but here it is, anyway: put the poor state of car geometry together with narrower-than-stock tires on the rear in the same pan with a guy's excitement of putting his hands on a powerful rear-wheel drive roadster and mash everything together with some very poor state of roads in Moldova and you get a... crash during vehicle test. Yes, I have put my own share of damage into my Honda, although not nearly as bad as it had already seen. I managed to destroy the front bumper, crook the bonnet and break a front wishbone.

I was faced with the prospect of paying for the damage, or getting the car. I did not pay for the damage.

Broken lower wishbone, bent stays and a stupid inner fender