SVO85

I don't know much about the trucks, but in the mustang world, forged pistons and rods are highly recommended. You can run a little boost on stock parts but sooner or later the bug will bite to up the PSI.

Troponin

I was just about to make a post about rods and pistons. That seems to be the weak spot in most engines.

I would do this. Put aside the money needed for the rebuild first. If you can't scrounge up the money for the SCer with putting the rebuild funds off to the side, I would rethink this through.

I dont know much about the 5.4 platform, however, I can think of better engines to supercharge.

Wolvee

430rw through a manual trans is about the "normal" long term limit of the pot metal rods and pistons in the mustangs. Many have made more, no doubt but most stick to the average. The same is true for the 5.4 but in reality it's more about the tuner and if he knows what he's doing.

Have a good base, Stick to low to mid boost, get enough fuel and have a good tuner.

All motors fail. Plan for whatever you can afford and then double it. lol

Troponin

What Mustangs are you referring to?

GMW468

The big question here is did the 5.4 come with forged rods and pistons from the factory? If not then I'd be cautious about installing a supercharger on a low mileage 5.4 let alone a 192k mile motor.


Remember a supercharger's job is to ram that fuel/air mixture into your cylinders at a very high rate, building up some serious cylinder pressure which of course puts extra pressure on your entire bottom end including rod and main bearings. For starters I'd insist on a forged bottom end, and then I'd be real leery about hammering the snot out of that motor if you do bolt on a supercharger.

99SportXLT

I believe the lightings (The original supercharged 5.4) came with a fully forged bottom end, regular 5.4s however did not to my knowledge though

Wolvee

Regular 5.4's used pot metal rods and hypereutectic pistons.

2thousand5.4

not all lighting came with forged rods. The later year production runs did but I believe the first 2 years only had a forged crank. And I forgot who said it but someone was saying that 12 psi is safe on stock internals. That's wrong. Most of the guys that do lighting swaps on stock engines say in the 6-8 psi range. 12 is alot of psi

Carcrazygts2

All Lightnings had foreged cranks. None of them have forged rods. They all got PMR I beams

99SportXLT

I knew something in there was forged lol