Cracked a piston ring. And that was just with the normal Comptech kit + A/C and AEM EMS. It hit a peak boost of 6-7 psi. The engine still ran, but my compression was low, and I was wanting to up the boost. That was how I found out about the problem. The shop I took my car to to get the work done did a compression and leak-down test before tuning with the smaller pulley.

The likely cause was ultimately the initial tune I had done. Either a plain bad tune, or perhaps going from being tuned in CA to being driven in AZ pushed it outside of the range it was tuned for. Hell, maybe even just adding the wide-band O2 sensor could have been enough to smooth out the fuel map, if there were just a couple a areas that were running a little lean. I don't know for sure. But based on what I knew at the time, I had no reason to expect issues. The shop I got tuned at seemed to be loved by everybody--never heard a bad thing about them. The Comptech kit is advertised as a nearly worry-free bolt-on mod.

If I was going to do it all over again, I would either stay at the "stock" pulley around 6-7 psi (especially since I now have a shop I trust to tune it right) or go with the 10-11 psi I'm at now but do the engine work from the get-go. To me reliable means pretty much worry-free, which I still think the 6-7 psi range is. Anything beyond that and the reliability of your car is pretty much entirely in the hands of the person who tunes it and the person who installs it. I guess it just depends on how much you trust the people working on your car. I'm much more skeptical now--rave internet reviews aren't good enough.

And gt30r, I don't want to mention who tuned me on here since I can't guarantee it was their fault. I'd rather not malign them without proof. I can send you a PM though.