Leaderboard

First thing to set straight here is that lack of IC might lead to being harder on piston rings. This simply isn't true. Yes heat is what will kill your rings, and without enough ring gap then heating up the rings enough to the point of them touching will crack a ring land on the piston, just about every time (true for all engines, not just L engines). But that will be caused by BMEP over time far more than inlet temps. Heat produced is going to be a product of how much fuel is burned. Cold air makes for denser air makes for more fuel makes for more heat generation. An extra 3psi of air (at valve) will cause far more BMEP than 50 extra degrees fahrenheit on the inlet air. All THAT said the largest problem with hot air and raising the boost to the limits of the factory turbo, is that you WILL be seeing inlet temps over 200 degrees (been there, done it). At those temps your MBT or required timing is going to be a VERY narrow window. Retard the timing to be "safe" you'll be leaving a lot of power on the table. Be too aggressive and detonation is almost guaranteed since the mixture is so volatile. The factory compression is low, but the head is also super inefficient at mixing the charge, so you'll be bound to have rich and lean spots within each chamber, and running under load with that hot of air long enough, get heat soaked into that head and it will be detonation prone. So, if you want to spend a full day on a dyno with someone who knows what they're doing, you can likely get well over 200whp without an intercooler. But the tuning would have to be exact, and you'll only see that power figure on a cold run. If it's tuned well then each sequential run as it gets hotter and hotter the peak power will go down as inlet temps rise. Run an intercooler, or run E85. Or run both. Both take work. And if you want "bolt on" parts, I hate to say it: buy a different car. Any car that's outside of mainstream is going to take a good bit of work to modify. Personally, I'd go with a generic intercooler and generic piping kit. Get a larger same side in/out to make routing easier inside the engine bay, and while you're at it make sure the inlet to the turbo is in front of the radiator outside the engine bay like factory. It's worth it. If you upgrade your rubber fuel lines, injectors and pump to run E85 you'll have all the cooling you'll need to reach the limits of the factory bottom end if you put enough turbo on it. Hope that helps.