Just doing a little reading on supercharging and am wondering what is the industry standard if there are any, on how much boost to safely run for reliability of a performance marine engine.

I went online and checked a HP calculator, and you can get very impressive gaines running a 2 core intercooler and 10 LBS of boost. But how long will it last? What are merc or sterling or any other big builder running. Is there a standard and what are the pro's and cons of higher and lower boost beside the HP trade off.

And lastly, is it always imperative to run an intercooler or could you run a very large supercharger like an 8-71 on a built SBC and maintain high boost (8-10) and keep low intake temps by slowing the big blower down since its so big?

Don't know about a lot of questions, but here are some factory engine/boost specs for some SC'd Merc engines.

525SC--454 ci--Wieand 177 blower @ 5.5 lbs boost
600SC--502 ci--B&M 420 Mega blower @ 6 lbs boost
800SC--572 ci--B&M 420 Mega blower @ 8 lbs boost

The 575SCi's in the Spectre I rode in spun 5100rpm but never showed more than 5 pounds on the Gaffrig.

my stock 600 sc's made 4.5 lbs of boost