How much power can I make?
We often get asked, “How much power can I make with this setup?”
The answer, as it often is, is, “it depends”. I know that in today’s society of instant everything, google-knows-all, and AI generated answers, that our answer is not a popular one. We are ok with that.
When discussing the physical strength of stock motors, be it an LS, JZ, S58, or any other commonly modified engine, the relative limits are generally “known”.
Many of these engines are renowned for their strength and well regarded to hold xyz amount of horsepower. Then you hear, “it’s not the horsepower, it’s the torque”. Then you hear, “it’s not the torque, it’s the boost”. You will see posts on the forums like this:
The above is a perfect example of someone who has no idea what has happened, spreading information based on lack of knowledge and experience.
The simple truth is that almost all of these engines will hold double their factory power rating. A small percentage of those engines will fail at stock power levels. A small percentage of them will hold way more than double their power rating. The rest of them will have a failure point somewhere in between.
That’s a big grey area, isn’t it? Sure is, but it’s also the truth.
As someone who has worked with thousands of engines over nearly 20 years, most of the “known limits” we hear about are based off one person’s experience with one engine. That’s a really small sample size and it takes many years, many miles, and many combinations to start to form realistic expectations about what any certain engine will hold.
The engineers build these engines to handle their stock power levels for hundreds of thousands of miles within reason. So you can reasonably expect them to hold more power than stock. When you get above that, most of them will likely hold together at our suggested power level, but not all of them (as evidenced by the picture above); a bent rod at a relatively low power level. We must have an understanding and an agreement about that. If you have the mentality that one person’s engine made xyz power, or held xyz power for 123 amount of time, and think yours should perform the same way, we are not a good fit and there is likely someone out there willing to take your money and tell you what you want to hear.
If you are utilizing our services to guide you through the setup and calibration of your vehicle, we’ll likely make some recommendations and also let you know how we would run it if it was our own vehicle. This should give you a pretty good idea on how we suggest setting up. And even then, this comes with risks, risk that you absolutely assume when you decide to modify your car.
”Ok, what I want is max effort and safe.”
Let’s start by addressing this request as two mutually exclusive requests. That’s like saying I want my coffee black, and also with creamer.
Let’s re-frame this requests into a few more realistic options:
A conservative calibration; this leaves many of the safety features in place and may even add more safety features than stock while asking for more power than stock based on hardware and modification’s ability to promote airflow. This is ideal for an adult, someone who has a fast car that does not need to be pushed to make power, or someone who simply doesn’t need “all of it”. This is also ideal for anyone who wants a low risk of engine damage due to an aggressive calibration combined with bad fuel and or environmental conditions. This is also a good option for vehicles that have low quality engine controllers, or engines that are easily damaged.
A moderate calibration; this would push a vehicle’s power with moderate explorations into the realm of where asking for more power gave us power in ideal conditions. This would maintain some engine protection strategies, and the engine would produce more power. The expectation is the driver keeps up on maintenance, uses common sense in the situation of heat-soaked, very hot days, bad fuel, or top speed runs on low quality or pump fuel.
A road race/circuit/drift calibration would be similar to a moderate calibration with consideration for engine coolant, intake, ambient, and oil temperatures. This would slow the car down when temps got too warm with more aggression than a moderate calibration. The car would automatically go faster when conditions are good.
A drag race calibration would make maximum power the main priority with lower emphasis on engine protection
A max effort calibration would remove engine protection strategies within reason
Hopefully the above options gives a good description of how we communicate different calibration techniques.
With all of the above options, we are always watching for boost control, knock, fuel pressure, injection window, lean mixtures, and temperature considerations. So when we say “max effort”, we still are running aggressive but appropriate values for all of the above. However, what has to be said, and even more importantly, has to be understood, is that none of the above calibrations have any way to detect when there is a hardware failure imminent.
What I mean by that is that there is no table that tells us when a connecting rod is at its physical limitations, or that an oil pump has decided to leave work early that day. These are unpredictable and all get worse, more catastrophic, and happen more quickly with more aggressive calibrations.
This is not intended to frighten anyone. It is just the reality of a sport where we are pushing machinery, and sometimes things break. You get to choose your aggressiveness. We often get towards the end of a calibration and then pose the question to the client. “Ok, we are making good power, are you happy with this, or do you want to go for more -- push it hard?”.
WHAT CAN YOU DO:
Decide how power hungry you are, and decide your risk tolerance. That means you have to choose; and choosing both safe and max is picking two. You get to pick one, the other, or in the middle.
Do your maintenance; especially fuel system care if you’re running ethanol
Consider the conditions; the fuel quality, air temp and quality
High speed, long pulls on low octane (pump fuel) is the hardest thing you can do on an engine. A quick romp gears 1-3 is much lighter on the load side of things
Cool charge air; that means good intercooling if you’re turbocharged/supercharged
In real estate they say, “pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered”. You decide how hungry you are, and let us know. After all, they’re your pistons!