Coheed, the piston speed of a 86mm stroke @ 9000rpm is 5079 FPM. RPMS and rev range is a controversial subject. Road racers will usually tell you to keep to 4500FPM average for really good stockish parts. if you have great aftermarket parts or awesome factory ones you can usually go to 5000-5200 FPM safely. I.E. the stock AP1 S2000 is a 84mm stroke which is about 4900FPM at 8900rpm ( factory redline) If you have great parts you can exceed that but its more than just good quality parts. R/S ratio, the weight of the parts, the tuning and so on all play HUGE roles in the longevity of the motor at high piston speeds.
Piston speed does make power on a motor with a high cylinder head air flow. but with piston speed comes wear issues in most cases. that VET setup that I posted going to 9500 RPMs regularly had a 10,000rpm limiter but has seen a high of 10,942 RPM (as recorded by the data logger) with a few runs on the dyno and on the street with a 10,750 rev limiter. It was set this high because of the second round tuning, peak power was made at 14psi of 522whp @ 10,200rpm and barely started to drop off after that, was still making over 500whp at the rev limiter. This engine was in a FWD car with a B15 LSD trans with some work done to it. With the gearing and that rev range, this car was very fast at very low boost, especially once you got up above 8,000rpm. If you shifted from 3rd to 4th at about 10,500rpm your rev's would drop back to about 7,500-8,000rpm or so. This engine was (is) so great because if you are in 3rd gear at say 5000rpm you are going about 65mph and you will have full boost around then, ( 300lb ft TQ) now you have a very flat TQ curve ( does not drop below 300lb ft till 9000ish rpm) so this motor will pull very hard and smooth till about 10,000rpm or so which is about 125mph. so you can drive from 65mph to 125mph in one gear ( 3rd) without having to shift. This means that if you raced say a STI, he would have to shift from 3rd, 4th and into 5th gear while you can just hold the same gear. Now ofcourse that means that if you can rev that high, that at 65mph you could drop down to 2nd gear (2nd tops out at about 85mph @ 10,500).
Now if you want a car that is very fast from the top of the rev range to the RPM drop back of the shift point, then you need something that is not that laggy and makes a lot of HP at that RPM point. Now if you look at this dyno sheet again, See how fast it builds Horsepower? It breaks 400whp just after 5000rpm! Now this is a DE motor, so if you do this with a VE head even with just stock sr20ve cams you should be able to make 525whp easy at 8000rpm and even more power sooner. with say a divided GT3076R. This motor is in a 2500lb street/drift S14. It is really really insane on the street. It has an OS Giken Gearset in it so in 5th gear at 4000rpm if you step on it, you think its going to take off. Its a rocket. This is more of an ideal "street" power band if you have the traction. This setup with a VE motor may make almost 400lbs TQ and only drop to say 340 by 8000rpm if setup right. That way you have a very very strong 4500-8000rpm powerband. you can even just run a Calum ECU with no rev limit and get an external like a MSD and rev to 8500 here and there.
-Ted