Boosted04S2K

Guess so. I had mine installed in June and the bracket isn't on there.

leov36

Code

Are you replacing many of the bolts in the kit? I checked many of the pulley face bolts (4 per side) and all had white or blue loctite. I feel the revision kit it sounds like WE BOTH got has so many of the previous concerns addressed. I did end up buying the ARP stud.

Any thoughts from anyone about red or blue loctite on the crank pulley bolt?

Timmigrant

Awesome thread! So much good info in here. I installed my KW 30 mm kit a year ago, and have since then done 14,000 km on the kit. I had the VTEC solenoid bracket come loose on my wife and spray engine oil EVERYWHERE. I had torqued everything, drove it, rechecked the torque on the bolts and then marked all the bolts. I was keeping a careful eye on all the bolts to make sure they weren't coming loose. This was a mistake. One of the poor design points of the KW VTEC Solenoid Bracket is the torque is not enough to fully compress their rubber gasket. This gasket relaxes over time and and the bolts will loose their preload. Use a good torque wrench to retorque those bolts until you can see the mounting bracket has contacted the block fully compressing the rubber gasket. Since then I've had no issues and the car is absolute blast to drive. It makes more than enough power for my needs. I'd still recommend using a marker to mark the position of all bolts you can see and regularly checking to make sure they aren't backing off.

As for tuning, I road tuned my car using etunez.com. It takes much longer but the tuner was knowledgeable and patient. The tune works well for me as a daily driver, and makes great power at WOT.

For street driving the stock radiator is adequate. For any kind of track use a bigger radiator and oil cooler is mandatory. I'd recommend an oil temperature and pressure sensor and display if you're doing any track days. I'm still working on improving my cooling setup as I was still overheating on a warm day at the Ridge in Washington State.

leov36

Kyle

Personally I'd upgrade the bolts that have some decent load on them. I'm going to be using the specified longer ARP stud vs the KW supplied one as well as an ARP bolt for the tensioner pulley as there's quite a bit of strain on those components.

If the crank pulley bolt comes loose at the factory torque rating either it wasn't torqued to that to begin with or the keyway sheared off of the pulley. I'm not certain but I don't think the KW pulley allows you to use a typical crank pulley tool....I think people use a strap wrench or something to hold the pulley from rotating while they torque it....or just hit it with an impact and give it a good couple of ugga duggas.

LHT has made it a point to undo every bolt from the "pre-assembled" KW pullies and Loctite them and check for proper torque. Personally I'd use red Loctite on the pulley assemblies; the bearing can still be serviced with or without the outer rings attached to the pulley, and if you ever have a problem you're sent an entirely new pulley assembly, bearing and all. The one thing I personally am not comfortable with is the use of red Loctite when threading the stud into the block and also on the nut that goes on it.....I feel like red Loctite is for things that you never need to disassemble or service again....I think blue would be more than sufficient for things that potentially may need to be removed in the future.

Kyle

Are you referring to the stock gasket provided with the KW kit? You didn't specify but that gasket should not be used. It isn't the right shape to properly compress and form a seal....any semblance of a seal that's formed by it compressing is actually the gasket material spilling out of the channel and flattening out, ultimately separating. If you haven't replaced it with an OEM gasket with the screen removed I'd highly suggest you did at this point.

Regarding the oil cooler if you plan on installing one I'd highly recommend the one sold by @har-vey on these forums. It mounts under the passenger headlight without any drilling or cutting. Probably the nicest and most thought-out setup for FI guys that have the space for a typical oil cooler occupied by an intercooler/heat exchanger, or in the case of the KW kit, the oil cooler for the Rotrex unit.

https://www.s12specialistcars.com/pr...oil-cooler-kit

Timmigrant

Kyle I learned the hard way that the stock Kraftwerks gasket was bad. I'm actually still using it and it's been reliable after retorquing it such that the bracket is in contact with the block. Knock on wood it's been good so far. Great info that the stock gasket with the screen removed also works. So anyone installing a new kit I'd agree that using an OEM Honda gasket with the screen removed is a WAY better solution.

As for the oil cooler I made some custom mounts hanging the oil cooler off the engine bar cross member, and positioned behind the radiator. I calculated the oil pressure drop through the oil lines and wanted to keep them as short as possible. My oil cooler is currently receiving warm air off the radiator, so it's not particularly effective at the moment. But with an S-shaped duct from under the car to my oil cooler I'm hoping to get in some good cold air, and have good flow evacuation. This prevents me from cutting up the front bumper too much (which I want to keep for brake air ducts in the future anyway) and keeps the oil lines as short as possible.

beechx1

Tim:
I track my car with a stock radiator, an oil cooler and brake ducts. See my thread here https://www.s2ki.com/forums/s2000-fo...ctane-1126205/ with pictures of the installation. I have never had any cooling issues even on 95 degree track days.

I was one of the early adopters and went through a couple broken 20 mm belts and had broken VTEC bolts three times. I finally drilled out the VTEC threads in the aluminum head, installed steel Time-Cert thread inserts, used ARP bolts and safety wired them in. No problems since then. Its good to see KW solving the issues that we early adopters had. I think its a really great kit with the bugs worked out.

Code

I had read somewhere that a trick is to actually pull a spark plug and thread a bunch of rope into a cylinder to prevent the piston from reaching TDC, thus providing resistance to torque down that bolt. My big concern is hurting something, any thoughts om that?