Boost or compression!

United States
September 26, 2010 8:47pm CST
I've always thought this to be an interesting topic, and it sometimes get's some interesting feedback. To a vast majority of people here they might not understand, but perhaps are performance car individuals and might be interested in this discussion. So here's the argument: In your opinion, is it better to drop a few point in compression and add boost to increase performance, or do you run a higher compression ratio and use a more moderate amount of boost. On one hand, as your compression ratio rises you'll be gaining performance, but the risks involved begin to increase as well, as the chance of detonation occurring is far greater, and that's under the assumption that your tuner did a perfect job of tuning the air/fuel ratio and other variables. However, on the other hand, you could lower your compression ratio and make up for it by increasing the boost. You'll lose some low end power, but could significantly gain the power up top and perhaps even open yourself up to more power. Reason being, you can run more boost safer with less compression. A lot of guys are torn here with a great crowd saying that they run high compression and just keep a good tune with their cars, but another crowd like myself thinks I'd rather keep the risk of detonation low despite how great my tuner is and just increase the boost to make up for and exceed in power. So what do you choose and why?
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