TracTuff K20/K24 Water Pump Housing Delete

TracTuff K20/K24 Water Pump Housing Delete Kit

Every accessory hanging off your crank costs power to spin, and the mechanical water pump is one of the worst offenders at high RPM. This TracTuff water pump housing delete pulls the entire OEM water pump housing, pump, and thermostat assembly off your K20 or K24 and replaces it with a CNC machined 6061 aluminum plate, setting the engine up for an electric water pump. It's a race car and dedicated track build part, and this is the Street kit configuration: the version that keeps your alternator, with the redesigned bracket and tensioner included.

What It Is and Why It Works

Uncoupling the pump from the crank does more than free up the power it took to spin it. A mechanical pump driven at crank speed cavitates during sustained high RPM because it's operating way past the speed it was designed around, and cavitation means the coolant stops moving right when the engine is working hardest. An electric pump runs at its own speed regardless of RPM, so you can program coolant flow off the ECU, hold consistent temps, and keep the pump and fans running after shutdown to cool the motor with the engine off. TracTuff advises against switching the pump off while the engine is running, and that's good advice.

The kit includes the machined plate with an OEM style o-ring groove, the alternator bracket, a tensioner with QA1 5/16 inch rod ends, a ground stainless tensioner pin retained by a 5/16 inch circlip in place of the old M8 bolt (a 2023 design revision that killed the slop in the tensioner pivot), zinc plated hardware, and the sealing o-ring. The alternator bracket revision also cleared the Dailey Engineering dry sump kit, per TracTuff. The plate carries a 1-5/16 inch-12 SAE (-16AN ORB) water inlet sealed by the o-ring, plus a smaller 3/4 inch-16 SAE (-8AN ORB) port. That small port is a crankcase breather, not a water port, and plumbing coolant into it will end badly. The breather chamber seals with Hondabond, same as the factory housing.

Specs

Fitment

Fitment is by engine, not chassis, so every K swap qualifies: a K20A2 in an EG or EK, a K24 frank in a DC2, a K swapped CRX headed down the strip. That's where most of these end up anyway.

What to Know Before You Buy

Start with the dealbreaker, this cannot be run with air conditioning. Two of the four A/C compressor mounting points come off with the water pump housing. There's no workaround, so if the car needs A/C, stop here.

Second, this plate doesn't cool anything by itself. Budget for the rest of the conversion: an electric water pump (TracTuff builds the system around the Meziere WP136S 20 GPM and WP336S 55 GPM pumps), a pump mount, a hose kit to get water from the pump to the plate, and fittings for the -16 inlet and -8 breather ports. A belt isn't included either, because crank and alternator pulley combinations vary too much to pick one for you. Plan the whole system before ordering the first part.

Third, the thermostat leaves with the housing. Temperature control becomes your job, through pump wiring or ECU control, which is exactly what you want in a race car and exactly what you don't want in a daily that sits in traffic. This is why we'd put this on a dedicated build and leave the commuter on the mechanical pump.

On alternator choice, TracTuff recommends the S2000 unit above everything else. The 2000-2001 Integra Type R (B18C5) alternator is the next best output, with the 1999-2000 Civic Si (B16) unit just behind it. Later B and D series alternators with ribbed pulleys physically fit the bracket but carry fewer belt ribs, so they're driving the belt with less contact. Torque the grade 12.9 pivot hardware to spec (59 lb-ft dry on the bolt), and seal the breather chamber with Hondabond during install.