supercharger/turbocharger

[Hobbybigred]

I have a 92 F-150 302 with quite a lot of long hours and hard work put into it and now Ive been thinking about putting a centrifigul supercharger on it due to the fact that its lighter and less of a hastle to bolt on. However, the fact that it is an older truck with about 130,000 miles on it I have been contemplating on whether or not to do it because im going to end up having to pull the motor and replace some of the parts and beef it up a little so it can handle the power. I also thought about turbocharging but since a turbocharger pretty much runs off of your waste from the motor I thought that would definitly be more trouble with an older vehicle. As far as the truck being an older high milage truck with a 302 is the centrifigul supercharger prolly my best bet?

[frederic]

Supercharging is generally easy to install, turbocharging requires more fabrication unless you find a vehicle specific kit or something close enough to shove in.

As far the the mileage on your engine... 130K to some engines is past it's life expectancy, for other's its a drop in the bucket - it all depends if the miles were local driving or highway driving or hauling driving etc.

Do a compression test, and a leak-down test, and measure the approximate health of your engine before making the decision. Also, if you have rod knock or piston slap when it first starts until the oil starts to circulate that's a bad sign as well.

Personally, if the engine is in good enough shape, I'd go for it knowing that at some point sooner than without forced induction, I'd have to replace or rebuild the engine.

[Hobbybigred]

gotcha sounds good. I did a compression check just a while back since its been a while after the rebuild. But cyl 8 has a little tick to it. But im replacing all the gaskets this weekend so Ill find out for sure what the issue is. But it is a local truck. No long travels or or hauling anything on it yet. Ive put to much money and hours into it to beat it up on the interstate. . But ill see what happens tommorow when I pull it apart.

[frederic]

Generally highway miles are less taxing than local driving. You get more wear starting it than you do cruising on the highway because you don't have oil pressure when you first turn the key. And generally once on the highway you're at a constant speed whereas local driving requires endless shifting.

Unless you're like me and get into overdrive as fast as possible and just idle around town

[red89notch]

didnt read al the other posts but heres the first thing youll run into.

you rings are old and worn out and your going to get blow-by like no tomorrow, which creates its on set of issues like the PCV valve popping right out of the intake,lol

heck on my highly modified 302 (non-power adder) i have plasma chrome moly rings and i run 12:1 compression and it wasnt uncommon for me to blow my dipstick right out of the oil pan the way i had to solve it was with an evac pump

a 302 block will take about 550hp (give or take) before turning into 2 4 cyclinder engines

if you end up rebuilding the motor you should try to find a mexican 302 block, you can find them fairly cheap and are quite a bit stronger in the main webbing and bore and also the main caps are beefier so you dont get main chatter