Don't forget, at 200k miles, the ring gap has opened up some!!

 

As rings wear, the outer diameter wears, but the actual diameter hardly changes, which in turn means the gap itself hardly changes. A tiny bit, but not enough to make a real difference.

 

Yup. Definitely not something I would want to bank on!

 

I forgot to mention that the motor has been rebuild so there’s a lot of new parts on it. If I don’t gap my rings how much boost can it hold plus HP?

 

It's not about how much boost it will hold, it's about heat load on the rings.
A large amt. of boost for a few seconds and low boost for a long pull can both break ring lands.
That's why if you play it safe you WILL file the rings for more gap. If not, you take a big chance at breakage.
There is no magic formula or equation here.

 

Alright

 

The cost and time turbocharge an engine then to only run 5lbs boost is a waste of time. You’ll want more power. buy new rings and gap them and do light ball hone job on the cylinders.

 

Will do currently buying rings now.

 

I always subscribe to the idea that if my ambition exceeds my current hard parts, I can plan a new rebuild on the ride home in the tow truck. Why rebuild a motor before it blows? Besides, most newby stuff also involves tuning errors. Best to get them out of the way before buying expensive stuff. Save the fully forged badass motor for after you work out most of the kinks.

 

Yep, my first tuning experience was with a boosted ls1. I'm procharged so a little different ball game. I ran that motor up to 10 psi on pump 91 octane then I switched to e85 and went up to 14 psi before deciding not to push it any further. I sold that short block in excellent condition and now have an ls3 block with forged internals and 20 psi.

More people have screwed up a perfectly good running sbe by pulling them apart to gap rings and switch to arp rod bolts than have hurt them with low boost.

I say run it as is and if you switch to e85 the stock ring gap becomes even less of an issue. I'd run e85 or meth before I'd pull apart a good running engine just to gap the rings.

Too many people think things they've never done have to be done a certain way.

 

Some of us have done it the wrong way and learned from our mistakes. Low boost is a gateway drug.

 

Good tuner goes a long way. E85 changed the game a lot also you can run way more boost on E85 with a good tune before stock ring gaps become a problem. That higher latent heat of vaporization is huge for cooling the combustion chamber...rings therefore don't get as hot or expand as much...thus larger ring gaps aren't needed. As you see many many people running big boost numbers on sbe without the rings gapped on E85 and being very successful.

 

Agree 100%...