well not all engines were designed all alike, for some gay reason mine always had lower compression then it just got lower and lower but man it was fun blasting it haha.

I'd say mine lasted a good year and a half b4 it totally went dead, hell I could still drive it, just only 1 cylinder went bad and its still got compression. That was with autocrossing, track drifting, mountain running (yep as fast as you can push it hehe), drag racing, highway racing, haha damn now that I think of it its been through a lot.

but yeah its all in your tuning and your driving. Driving is part of the tuning, you gotta test drive it make sure all your gauges are reading safe readings. Crap my car always ran hella rich but I'm guessing its because the engines compression was weak. Also it depends on how hard you drive it, if you drive it like a mad man all the time something is bound to break sooner or later.

but if you do decide to get the the stage 1 non intercooled I highly suggest you get an intercooler, any intercooler will do get a DSM sidemount, Saab 900, etc... whatever you can get your hands on and put it on. The intercooler makes the car run much more happy hehe.

does ne that's had a star for more than a year noticed you get a lotta boost spikes when you first drive the car? I remember sometimes it spiked to 10 or something one night I even got it up to 20 GASP (boy it felt good though). I always figured that I was never excercising the wastegate enough but its started doing it often and it never did it b4.