turbo/rebuild/compression questions

[heff]

Hey turbo experts, I have some questions, I have a 98 eclipse GS with 100k on the car, and I need some power, I have ruled out bolt ons, which leaves me with 2 options , motor buildup, and or turbo kit. if i wanted to spend unlimited amounts of money on this car I would do both, but I don't yet know how much i want to spend on THIS car, especially all at once. So i was going to just put a mild turbo kit on and run that for a while, however if i intend on keeping the car for long enough I will have to rebuild it, sooner than if I did nothing, however, if I built the motor, I will have actually extended the life of the car as well as gained performance, although now I can't put on a turbo because of the high compression. My question is, is there any way to build an engine that will give me immediate performance gains, but can also withstand mild boost, down the road ?

Thanks for the help,
Heff

 

[FuriousEclipse]

You can build the motor up with low compression pistons. Most people i have seen on here get the Hahn or Star Stage II turbo kits and run them on no more than 8psi of boost untill they can afford the bottom end rebuild. Some people on here will probably disagree until they tunr red in the face about running boost on stock internals, but its been done, still done, and if properly maintained it will run more.

Howellautomotive.com offers a bottom end rebuild kit, and A place i remember call Faster than you performance, not sure of the web address on them. They offer complete blocks and heads already assembled for turbo(low compression) or the all motor(high compression setup) with the internals.

Turbo kit alone will run an easy $3000 and the bottom end i would guess about another $1500???? not sure. Hopefully somebody else can help you out with more info than what i have provided.

 

[97eclipseRS]

you want low compression with turbo because boost responds better. i think fty went out of business but im not 100% sure. look into howell, they have bottom end rebuild kits for roughly 1,100 dollars. if money is a factor, consider getting the star kit as it is a couple hundred dollars cheaper

 

[heff]

I know that low compression is the way to build when going turbo, but I'm probably not going to do it all at once as i don't want to dump $6000 into this car right now, I'm looking to do things in stages, so if I sell the car I haven't lost too much money. What I wanted to know is that is it possible to rebuild an engine that will give you performance just from the rebuild, but also be able to handle boost later on if I go turbo? i would think that if a 8:1 compression bottom end could handel 12-15lbs of boost, then a 10:1 compression could handle 5-6lbs. Am I wrong?
thanks
Heff