I was wondering how many pounds of boost I could run on an engine with a stock bottom end? You can see my current mods in my signature. I just don't want to wear my engine out in a year or something like that! My car is a 95 TA with about 60000km (37500miles).

Thanks.

 

Safely.....none. Less than 1 week w/ the procharger installed, I have an oil leak, and a cooling problem. Gotta love it!

 

0 psi

Although you can get away with about 7 psi Get your self an ATI kit, mainly because it will be 7psi of intercooler boost

 

I've looked at some 4.5lb kits...would that be a waste of $$? I just really don't want to have the oil leaks you mentioned or have my bottom end get trashed!

 

I just finished my Vortech about a month ago and it's running perfect... I know **** is going to start breaking soon but for the most part it's running fine. No oil leaks, no cooling problems, no air leaks, nothing of the sort. Just take your time to get every perfect during the install and you will be okay.

As a precaution I replace old stock parts with new ones as preventative maintenance. Opti and coil are next... then walbro... then cam rr's and springs... then pistons. Just remember, the stock car was not meant to handle the blower, so you can't just bolt it on and expect everything to be peachy.

 

so your running a non aftercooled vortec. What do you think so far, i have always thought you dont realy need an intercooler unless your running a good amount of boost.

 

I put my Turbo on my stock motor around 30,000 miles, it lasted about a year and a half and 15,000 more miles before a piston finally went. Point being you will always break something (usually the piston ringlands) on the stock motor, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but you will never find one that doesn't eventually break. Ask anone that has been blown for more than 3 years if they are still on the stock motor. I have herd of guys lasting up to 30K miles blown on the stock motor. I have a friend that lasted 30 secs and it was time to rebuild, but that was @11psi stock everything (tune too) He learned the hard way. If your worried about trashing the bottom end, a blower is not for you. PERIOD.

 

If your opti is good dont change it samewith coil. None the less with the $$$$ you save you could go buy some forged pistons spend a little more for rods and be fine. The bottom end is not to friendly with boost.

 

As a genreral rule, stick with no more than 6lbs. The $/hp gain with this much boost isn't really too favorable, BTW. Peak hp levels are a bit misleading. A centrifugal blower car will not be as fast as an NA car (or turbo or nitrous car for that matter) with the same peak hp. The power curve for a centrifugal is kind of "peaky". With 6psi and no other changes you will gain in the range of 75rwhp. Enough to notice, but it won't make your car blazingly fast. Headers make a huge difference on a blower car. I gained close to 40rwhp adding AS&M mid-length headers and dual high flow cats as compared to stock manifolds/single factory cat.

Rich Krause

 

This is coming from someone who lost an engine when the odometer read only 29,000 miles and only had about 1000 miles with the supercharger.
I had the ATI 600B or something like that with 3 core intercooler. There are several thing I would have done much differently, including:
*NOT using the LT-4KM
*get the computer tuned for it
*get a real fuel system with a better pump and bigger injectors
*buy a fuel pressure guage to make sure the fuel is getting there
*make sure the engine is running near proper temp, and not hot all the time
*use regular, not synthetic, oil
In that order. Like I said, I lost the engine due to 4 broken ring lands after only 1000 miles. I am convinced there was a serious fuel problem, but I had no warning signs. Just started smoking one night after a race. I know it would have been *much more dependable if I would have done the above. Some of the guys on the LS-1 board are getting 10`s of thousands of miles on stock bottom ends and making 500+rwhp and about 9psi of boost.
I will be putting a D1 on my stock LS-1 in a few days. I`ll let you know how it turns out.

 

Why didn't you use the Knock Module?

 

I actually did use the knock module. This was back years ago when that mod was just becoming the "buzz". Alot of us on the message board did this mod because it got rid of false knock. Eventually though, someone determined that actually wasnt detecting real knock either, and several of the unlucky ones (myself included) experienced engines grenading after a short amount of time with superchargers. I don`t have a link to the reference since it was so long ago, but I can try and look it up. So, looking back, I wouldnt have done the mod.

 

Ahh, I see. Also, synthetic vs. standard oil? What's up with that? I just started using synthetic.

 

That engine that needed rebuilt after only 29,000 miles had synthetic motor oil in it. But when we took it apart and looked at the main bearings, they were completely worn. There was no silver whatsoever left on the inside of the bearings. A freind of mine had his `Hawks LT1 rebuilt after 50,000 miles because of the same thing. Likewise my brother`s GTA with a L98 w/only 30,000 miles. The bearings out of all of them looked the same. The only thing they all had in common that we could think of that could cause this was the oil we were using, which was the same (Mobil 1 synthetic). A local shop around here asked my buddy with the Hawk if he used synthetic oil when he went to them to have his engine rebuilt. When my freind asked why, they said the majority of premature engine failures they`ve seen for some reason have that common denominator. I`m not sure it`s the oil, but it`s suspicious enough.

 

if you poll becasue i just saw a thread about oil and 80% of the guys use mobil 1 syn so i dont know whats going on with yr car and yr friends but i use it to and have no problems