How durable is the 1NZ-FE???

[Carvin'07]

It all depends on how long you wish to run your car. Do you have a great, permanent job with a thick paycheck, or do you work at a grocery store and live with mom and dad? If it is the former, boost it, blow it and then rebuild it! If it is the latter, boost it til it blows, then buy your next project car.

IMO, I agree with largeorangefont...bolt ons bolt ons bolts ons. Your car will treat you very well.

With a turbo on an OEM non-turbo/non-performance engine, you will significantly shorten the life of the engine. The 1NZ-FE is an open deck block with not much material in between the cylinders and the coolant passages. This means less material to hold back the boost! Yes, they are likely iron-lined, but this lining is very thin. The piston dome is likely not optimized adequately to minimize major hot spots created during turbocharged combustion. Plus, there are no piston oil-squirters and the rods are like toothpicks. This means you will need to run it more rich than a stock turbo'ed (or high perf. NA) car to keep it cool enough to prevent excessive knock. The injectors/fuel pump may be limitations as well...I do not personally know the max fueling capacity for these parts for this engine.

These limits from the stock design are some of the many reasons that you get pre-mature blowby. You accumulate hundreds of mini-knock events in your cylinders/pistons/rings and it creates an uneven seal...the crankcase pressure will push the oil up into the combustion chamber.

If you run a car too rich for too long, you can certainly limit the life of the engine. Your plugs will foul often, you will have to replace your O2 sensor often (not something you want to do on a regular basis...especially if you use a wideband...it gets really expensive!)

Your friends may be able to run stock BXXs at 12 psi, but for how long until they started to burn oil?

my thoughts...
Carvin'