Day 1
Decided we'd try and pull the crank pulley out... Don't have the special tool...

Got 1/2" impact in there, no luck...
Breaker with 4 ft cheater bar, in 6th gear, standing on brakes. Nothing... It was loading the suspension.
Pull radiator / condensor (you can pull them up without having to disconneting hoses), use 3/4" electric impact that will pull lags with 4" washers THROUGH LOGS. N o t h i n g. So it's safe to say this bolt is really effing tight.
Gave up, put everything back together.

Day 2
Called local Honda dealership and asked to borrow tool. No go.
Talked to them further and they said for $60 they'd switch pullies for me completely. Agreed, took about 2 hours (from dropoff to pickup). Well worth it, IMHO. Might bolt the Comptech pulley onto the crank pulley tonight, tomorrow is the big day.

Day 3
Installed.

In order of most difficult to least:

Crank Pulley (Honda Dealer ended up doing it as seen above)
Airbox
ESM (Cutting engine harness oh my!)
Fuel Pump

Impressions
It's awesome. It pulls and Pulls and PULLS and P U L L S! Do this.

 

There is no way around it. You need the crank pulley tool to do this job.

 

The RIGHT tool for the specific job. That bolt can take up to as much as 500 lb/ft to get broken free. To put that into perspective, that's over 3 times the max torque your engine can put out.

 

why would you even try to do this without the specialty tools?

My experience also has shown that the older MY's the harder it was to break the bolt free.

Hope the rest of the install goes better.

 

I used a 6' pipe and it still required a bit of muscle to break that bolt loose. When it popped I thought I destroyed the breaker bar.

 

Why not try without the tool? Save me $60 and a few hours at the dealer.

You guys have no sense of adventure!

Updated

 

How hard is it with the special tool?

 

Shouldn't take more than a few minutes, but when that bolt pops loose you better not let the breaker bar slam into your fender.

 

When I did my install we had the right tools, plus long cheater pipes, and with four guys pulling on the cheaters we STILL couldn't get the bolt to budge. Finally we gave up and called in two guys who have arms bigger than my legs, and after substantial struggling the two muscle men got the thing to break free. On an older car it is a good idea to soak the bold down with penetrating oil the night before. I think I could have saved myself a lot of grief if I'd had enough sense to think of that BEFORE I went through the exercise.

I'd gladly have paid $60 not to have had to go through that part of the install.

 

I guess I just got lucky. W/ the morosso tool and a 5 foot pipe I was able to break mine loose by myself. Now it was my 2nd motor so perhaps the honda techs at the dealership didn't torque it as much as it comes from the factory.