Thread: 400 whp

I'm having a "discussion" with co-workers about turbo 4 cyl. How many cars that are truly "400 WHP" can run a 45 minute session at a real race track without having lap time degrade because the intercooler or turbo reach saturation and slow the thing down?

My opinion is that there are a few in the SR20 community that regularly do this without a problem. Others within my sphere of influence think that I am batty.

400HP is an easy figure to reach and will be reliable. Its once you get to 500, 600 and 700 is where things start getting more fragile. But of course it depends on how the 400HP is achieved.

There are plenty of SR20's here in NZ that are 400HP which are daily driven, driven to track days, competing and then driven back with no issues.

That's a lot of power for a 45 minute session. Just about everything will need work, built engine, drivetrain, brakes.COOLING, more oil capacity.etc...
That's why many opt for n/a

Its tough but not impossible. There are plenty of turbo track cars but it requires a lot more attention to the cooling system. a oil cooler is a must along with a massive radiator. also proper ducting and venting of the hood and bumper will be required. This is just to keep the engine in check. You still need to worry about the tranny and brake systems.

I've run my car on a course for 20min sessions. You get about 15 laps in that time. I didn't have any failures, and the intercooler didn't seem to get too hot. The engine never overheated with the koyo. I was running about 14psi with some 100 octane. This should put it easily at 400whp. It ran 3 sessions without a hitch. The Brembos worked great, and people there couldn't believe I was running on Duralast gold brake pads lol.

I'm sure if I was going 10/10 the brake pads would be the first to fail, but people said they saw sparks flying out of the brakes on the last low speed left corner. The brake rotors turned blue on the hats lol. They got a bit soft, but didn't fail. Better pads would have resulted in color-changing-Brembos.

^^^^^ the gold pads aint all that bad. for 30 bucks u cant go wrong. perfer wagners or akabono over gold but its def a good set of pads or medium abuse. yeah the cooling system would need some work and a good clutch that is for sure.

I can tell you in the turbo miata community 400whp is considered a really tough nut to crack with FI. There are a few LSx in that range, but even then not as many as you would expect. looking at SR community then looks like most folks who are running 2871 turn the boost down to 14/15 or run bug juice or both, which nets mid 300's i guess. so that leaves 3071 and larger?

in for data points, i'm very curious about this as i'm working on building a ve+t motor (p12 cams + 3071gtx) for next year. planning for 14psi and 91 octane gas. still no e85 near the tracks i go to...

thats where i see everyone fail at; everyone has a set psi and i dont think it should be that way. its all in the tune. i bet with that 3071 and a good tune u could see 20+ and great power, like whats really the difference from 14 psi to 15, not much but noticable difference. a well built budget motor could make u some good power with reliability.

The car that we are trying to design would be able to run an appropriate intercooler and radiator, fully ducted to control the air flow. Brakes and transmission would not be a problem 'cause they're all Brembo and Xtrac sequential. This isn't a budget build. I was just wondering about the engine itself. The prevailing theory is that the engine can't make 400 WHP for the required time but based on the information that I have learned previously on this site I didn't think that it sounded that difficult. I figured a VE with Eagle rods, N1 cams, 20 psi, etc. would be able to make 400 kind of numbers pretty easily.

Considering this, brake pads at dealer are $200 a pair. I bought some Brake-best Selects, and they were garbage. I bought the DLG pads to replace those and they feel exactly the same as the OEM brake pads. I mean, identical. They have good wear characteristics, great bite! They even squeal like the factory pads did. lol. Gotta love them Brembos.

I would go for a nicer set of pads, but they always end up chewing up my rotors really quick. People knock on the DLG, but the 350Z pads in these brembos work really well for 350+ whp.