Boost on stock internals, looking for your toughts Options

[frosty]

Alright, I do understand that if you turbocharge anything it is wise to beef up the internals.(duh)

The reson for my post is to read your thoughts of a magazine article I read in this months HCI. The article stated that they turbocharged a b16 motor with stock internals. After pushing around 300 ponies the piston rods broke (I believe that was it, it's been a while since I read it, but I'm about 95% sure that was it) Anyways, they changed them out with stronger ones and increased the boost to 24 psi. producing a little over 500 hp. The reason they did this article was to show that with proper tuning stock internals can hold their own.

Now if this was me, I would feel more comfortable with stronger internals than stock ones, but it still makes me ponder the thought of (with proper tuning) how much boost our motors could hold with stock internals.

(please undertand that if I do add a turbo to my motor I do plan on improving the inside of the beast and not try to be smooth and run only on the stock stuff.)

[OOBE]

You can only do so much tuning for that engine to run safe like it's supposed to, but you definately cannot overcome the strength limit of the internals. It'll break no matter how much tuning you do to it. Some engines, even economy ones, are stronger than others. The Mitsubishi 4G93 (Mirage LS 1.8) can hold over 300 WHP on stock internals for a long time without failing. The tranny can hold over 400 WHP without failing...for an econo-box, that is impressive. The Mazda Protege engines and trannies are also extremely strong so people just turbocharge them and don't worry about internals failing. I have seen this on my own experience, not something somebody told me to. My friend has a '97 Mirage and never has replaced the tranny or done any bottom or headwork to it. He has been pushing over 400 WHP for years with just rods, pistons and hardware...plus an EMS to tune it right. Unfortunately, our Celica engines (7A-FE and 5S-FE) were not blessed like those other econo-engines.