Many of you may already be familair with the white Skunk2 sponsored Sportcar Motion Civic that has been dominating the FWD Modified Time Attack class as of lately. Loi Song, the owner, while already pleased with the way the car has been performing with its naturally aspirated K24 platform, has decided to crank it up a notch by making the leap to "the next evolution of supercharging" using a Kraftwerks K-Race Supercharger kit. In preparation for the 2009 Redline Time Attack series, as well as Loi's participation in the upcoming Castrol Syntec Top Car Challenge, we brought the car here to get started on transforming this all motor track star into a supercharged beast.

In naturally aspirated trim, the K24 setup that helped propel this Civic to so many wins, made roughly 290hp to the wheels. It has a fully built bottom end with 13.7:1 high compression pistons, Port Flow ported head, Skunk2 Stage 3 cams, Skunk2 Pro Series Valve Springs, Skunk2 Ti Retainers, Skunk2 Megapower K-Swap Header, ported RBC manifold, and a Skunk2 70mm Throttle Body. While most people thinking about switching to forced induction with a motor like this would probably swap to a lower compression, we decided to go ahead and stick with the high compression setup to see what kind of power it could make.

One of the advantages of the Rotrex Supercharger is its low heat buildup. Unlike turbochargers that rely on hot exhaust gases to power the compressor, or other supercharger units that are lubricated by the engine's hot oil, the Rotrex unit is belt driven and has its own separate oiling supply and oil cooler. This allows the Rotrex supercharger to produce boosted temperatures near ambient. Combine this with smooth and progressive boost delivery, and the ability to run higher compression setups with a Rotrex supercharger becomes much more manageable.

With the Kraftwerks K-Race kit, customers have a few different choices between supercharger size, supercharger pulley size, and their own crank pulley size to really dial in how they want their car to perform specific to their application and power targets. We wont get into all the details in this article, but you can refer to the Kraftwerks K-Race kit page for more info. For Loi's car, based off of his engine setup and the previous K-Race kits we've done, we opted to go with a C38-71 supercharger, a 110mm supercharger pulley, and a 138mm Type-S crank pulley. The C38-71 unit is capable of flowing just over 900 CFM, which according to Rotrex, should be good for anywhere between 450-550whp. With the pulley size selection we made, we should be able to spin the motor to about 9200 RPM without overspinning the charger and damaging it. This should be interesting.

In the next few weeks, we will be tuning Loi's setup and trying different combinations to see what the motor likes the most. The Skunk2 stage 3 cams may end up coming out as well as we test other cams in search of the ideal setup. We hope to provide consumers with detailed coverage of the buildup and tuning process to help guide others that may be interested adding a Kraftwerks supercharger to their K-series setup.

Take a look at the pics of the current transformation and stay tuned as we continue to keep you updated on Loi's 2009 Time Attack performance and the results of the Castrol Syntec Top Car Challenge!