Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryan GT86
What's the max horsepower the stock engine can handle before you have to rebuild? Looks like a lot of supercharger and turbo kits can bump stock engines up to 300 hp from the stock 200/205 hp.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by firekat
The general consensus is yes, about 300 hp at the wheels. Most think that would be about the limit, though "YMMV". The variables that I have seen for that is:
Wheel HP vs Crank HP
91/93 vs E85
Most "Stage 1" kits seem to be pushing an additional 70 - 100 HP out to the wheels. That equates roughly to an additional 100 HP at the crank. The car on average puts out about 170 - 180 to the wheels stock. The Stage 1 kits mostly seem to kick that up to 260 - 290 on gas, 300 at the wheels running E85.
The addition of catless headers to these installations could boost your output to the wheels as you have a less impeded exhaust flow, which one could reason would not have an effect on engine internals. If the vehicle is on the street, you could have smog compliance issues, since there is a sizable cat on the stock header.
Empirically it appears that most people are able to accomplish the addition of 100 hp at the crank without building the engine. There are cases of people having failures within the Stage 1 range, it does not seem common, but certainly is not unheard of.
Consider that greater than 300 WHP you can get into potential drivetrain issues.
There is a lot of variables in all of this (driving habits, tracking, etc.), a fair amount of discussion and opinion has played out on these issues and will continue to do so.
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Wouldn't it also matter whether the kit was a SC vs turbo?
A supercharger may dyno at 300 whp like a turbocharger, but the supercharger is pulling some of the power to run itself. Say it takes 30 hp to run the SC, then a 300 whp SC'ed car would be making 330+ plus drive train losses at the pistons (if that makes sense), meaning the pressure on the rods/pistons/bearings will be higher. Also, a supercharger is more direct with more low end, so the potential for damage could also be higher for an equal rwhp to a turbo'd car.