DannyT

My 383 has a forged steel crank, factory rods and hypereutectic (spl?) pistons (10.28CR). What is a safe/conservative amount of boost to run? I'm only toying with the idea of getting a SC and am just curious.

Damon

Don't worry too much about the rods. They can take a LOT of torque. The weak point is the rod BOLTS that like the stretch and fail at high RPMs. If you're going to keep running in the same basic RPM range after the blower install they will probably work just fine.

The REAL concern is your compression ratio and the pistons. Blowers don't like high compression. Leads to detonation and that's where the concern about the pistons comes in. Cast or hypereutectic pistons won't take detonation for very long. Forged pistons are more forgiving but really, if you run ANY piston in detonation for long it will fail.

Ring gap for a blower motor is also different. They need wider top ring gaps due to the elevated combustion temps. They'll usually be about .007" wider for a blower application than for a N/A one. You don't want to know what happens to the motor if you overheat the top rings and butt the ends togheter. Trust me on this one. Not that it's GOING to happen, but if you run on the "ragged edge" you'll want this safety margin. I suspect that a LARGE proportion of piston failures in blown/nitroused motors relate more to inadequate ring end gaps than to detonation "blowing a hole" through them.

DannyT

Thanks for the info. I am actually using ARP rod bolts.
The motor wasn't built specifically for a blower so I'm not sure about ring gap.