I built a vintage 354 blown Hemi's 10 years ago.
Stock block and heads... Venolia pistons...8-1, 8 lbs. boost, stock rods bushed with good bolts... Si stainless valves... stock rockers rebuilt... Clay Smith cam...very mild with a 113 lsa...525 lift... 240-ish duration (the blower mellows out the cam a bit). I ran an old Carter 750 single. Nicely built engine with good parts and machining.
You don't need a girdle, aluminum heads, dual 850's, fancy rods or a mega crank IF you keep the boost down to 8lbs. and keep your hoof out of it. You can have a very nice DD with good fuel economy and loads of driveability.
Now if you want 4 mpg, an uncontrollable idle, gas dripping from the exhaust, overheating in traffic, etc. then go all out. I didn't want that...
There are thousands of blown factory built cars running hyper pistons, stock rods, etc. getting 100,000 miles or more without issues.
I also helped a friend build one of these. It was a 354 with a tunnel ram and a blower on top of that. Cost a lot more than doing a blown wedge, and at the end of the day, only made a shade over 500hp...Lots of torque and reliability, but was a big disappointment. Especially with today's wedge heads where 700hp pump gas NA is no problem.
