Chris - not going to dispute anything you've written there however I am going to highlight one bit.
Originally Posted by cjwood555
someone who's competent enough at using dreamscience/sct CAN make the st170 ecu (which is just a 104pin EECV, contrary to the marketing rubbish about black oak) work properly in forced induction applications
This is why I have said it's not a feasible option. Dreamscience has been used in the States (where it originated from) for forced induction conversions on the SVT (which is equivalent to the ST170 over here) with varying degrees of success BUT the fuelling systems on the American models differ significantly from the European models which is why DS is not yet the 'miracle cure' which allows you convert a NA motor with a NA ECU to a forced induction application simply with a remap. I fully appreciate that someone has to do it first and they will be the guinea pigs but if you can afford to be the test bed and afford to keep rebuilding/replacing your engines when they go wrong due to insufficient/poor/experimental mapping then surely you can afford to do the job 'properly' in the first place and go for dedicated aftermarket management. You've only got to look towards someone like Blingbling who had a circa 260-280bhp supercharged ST170 running a DS map which went spectacularly wrong due to poor mapping by the DS tuner (P3000 IIRC). He had to foot the bill for another full engine to be built and has come out and said he wished he'd listened to the advice given to him beforehand and gone for aftermarket management to begin with. It's a catch 22 situation but, if it was my money, I'd go for the safer bet every time even if it meant a higher initial outlay on the build.
No arguments with anything else you wrote though.
