This is another common one we get, which once again the answer is very much “how long is a piece of string?”
Every setup, every engine, every customer, every build is different, and adding forced induction (FI) to a setup must be evaluated on its individual merits.
I feel a brief explanation of FI is necessary here – the term ‘forced induction’ refers to a way of artificially ‘forcing’ more air into an engine than what would be available in naturally aspirated format (NA). There are many differing methods of FI, and once again, going over the details of each one right now is not practical – what does remain the same is the concept that in FI applications, we are ‘compressing’ the air before it arrives in the engines cylinder for combustion. By compressing the air, we can squeeze a greater volume of air into the same space or over the same time. This extra air then provides us the foundation to then enter combustion and increase power output.
The biggest factor that must be considered with FI, is that tremendous heat is a byproduct of the compression. Compressed air is much hotter than the cool, dense air, our engine are normally ingesting. With this extra heat comes associated risk factors, such as increasing the chance of detonation, pre ignition, or simply increasing the heat in the combustion chamber to a level where component failure is a possibility for any large number of reasons. Factory FI engines generally run a significantly lower compression ratio to compensate for the extra heat generated from compressed air, so when adding FI to an engine, this is one thing that must be considered. If the engine is a fairly high compression engine from factory, the extra heat from the addition of FI may cause issues and lead to component failure.
Support system upgrades are generally also required to ensure the addition of FI is “safe” –drivelines, fuel delivery, intercooling and many other systems may / should need to be appropriately upgraded in order to ensure optimal reliability.
Whether or not it is “safe” for ones engines is dependent on an infinite number of variables, but the short answer is – if all things are appropriately considered, then absolutely adding FI to an engine is a safe and reliable way of exponentially increasing power output. For what its worth, the addition and upgrading of FI to vehicles has been one of our main areas of expertise for many years now, so if you are contemplating the move, make sure you give us a call at the shop so we can thoroughly go through all the other options and information that must be considered to work out whether FI is right for you.