Marty's road to ~450WHP

Martijn_b

I pushed the limits...and found them at 13 psi. Last weekend a rod came through the side of my engine.

For 18.000 miles i have been happily boosting. Regularly on 12-13 psi, and lately also on ethanol. I take care of it well, but also drive the car on trackdays or highway runs.

It has seen some high coolant temps on the nurburgring, or a boost spike to 14psi under cold weather conditions. Always held up quite well until my engine became noisy around 2.000 miles ago. It would trigger the knock sensors to pull timing. Over time i could see the engine becoming noisier every 300km or so on my data logs. Not just under WOT but also under low load conditions the knock sensor would be triggered.

I thought it might be a glitch in the ecutek software, there is a known problem with that. But afterwards it probably was the start of rod knock. Im tuned by a very experienced tuner and knew that i was pushing the limits of the stock block.

So after reading so much about "safe boost levels" its now my time to come to a conclusion. I guess 12-13 psi is what can go well for a long time. Some people baby the car, others drive the living sh*t out lf it. Some drive 3.000 miles a year and others 10.000. In the end it can go well for a very long time - but everything has its limits sooner or later.

I have a spare 15.000 miles 2017 engine that i will put in for now.. Hope to be back on the road soon!


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