I don't view it as the hard way. It's a random cast piston 383 with unknown miles on it and of questionable integrity. I got 7 years of fooling around with my first scratch built turbo kit and efi with it. I think it had a really good run actually.

I will admit that with the efi, a conservative tune for fuel and timing, always 93 octane, and water injection once I went past 5psi, I did not expect to detonate it. I should have been doing routine plug reading in order to more closely isolate when it happened however.

And I learned that I need to make sure a turbo kit has room to get a compression tester in each bore without having to take stuff apart if I can.