1971Chall

I have had both turbo and supercharged cars. I currently have an SRT-4 as a daily driver and a '03 supercharged Cobra (also had an '87 Grand National for 8 years awhile back as well as a '93 5.0 Mustang with a vortech). A properly sized turbo will spool up very quickly. Typically the turbo cars are running more boost than a supercharged car. My SRT-4 was 12 -13 psi stock vs 8 psi for my Cobra. My opinion? I don't see there is any measurable difference between the two as far as engine wear is concerned. I have NEVER damaged any of my charged engines even after increasing the boost levels. There is one big killer of a boosted engine: DETONATION As long as you keep the engine out of detonation it should live a good life. Air/fuel ratio needs to be around 11.5 to 12 to 1 so the engine does not lean out(which will cause detonation and a dramatic increase in cylinder temps). Next up is the bottom end. More specifically pistons and rods. A hypereutectic piston is what a lot of the newer non-charged motors use. While it is stronger than the old cast pistons it doesn't match the strength of a forged piston. The factories use the hyper pistons because: They are cheaper than forged and also have much tighter piston to wall clearance which reduces wear/rock and blowby. The other big thing is boost vs timing vs octane. These 3 items will play a major part in what can be accomplished. In most cases people will want to run pump gas for convenience and cost. With 93 octane pump I have found a maximum of 16 -17 psi can usually be run as long as TOTAL timing doesn't exceed 18-19 degrees. Things that help REDUCE detonation are: Cooling the intake charge(intercooler, etc), increasing the octane of the fuel, running the engine a LITTLE cooler(180 deg) reducing compression ratio and reducing timing. I can tell you I bolted a 5 psi Vortech supercharger on my old Mustang and with no other changes picked up 6 mph in the quarter and over a half sec ET on street tires. I ran this set up for 8 years and NEVER had any problems. This was on a totally stock bottom end also. I ran 23 deg of timing and used 93 octane fuel. I also verified my air/fuel ratio was around 12 to 1 which is ideal for a charged engine. If I were going to supercharge a 5.7 or 6.1 I would keep the boost levels to 5 or 6 psi and make sure the fuel system and timing were where they needed to be. This would provide a considerable boost in performance without a big sacrifice in reliability. Just my 2 cents on the matter.