Quote:
Originally Posted by pokeybritches
Edit: To be clear, the S54 block is plenty strong for a stock or mildly boosted car. The disagreement arises on whether it is suitable for the 1000 horsepower builds without additional work like sleeves.
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No 1000 WHP engine will run forever. No matter how well built it is. It's not a matter if it will break, but when. A side from that, sleeving an iron block makes little sense. In the S54s case it makes even less if you were to drill the cylinders out to fit sleeves. The cylinder walls would be too thin to offer any support for the sleeves themselves, thus making a sleeved S54 weaker than a stock block. That's just the info I got from someone who's probably the best in the biz when it comes to BMW turbos. As far as I know HPF tried to sleeve the S54 block, but had no or little success.
And the S54 would run a significant amount less boost than a M50 at 1000 WHP, the dual vanos on the S54 would help with the powerband as well. Assuming you'd use a non vanos M50 which seem to be the most popular choice.