Wade said:
I see your point but there are tons of high HP hot air engines around. The detonation has more to do with the air/fuel ratio...
Sure you can make big numbers without an intercooler,
provided your engine is designed with this in mind. A good example is the old-school V8 brigade with their non-intercooled roots blowers. They sure make some big numbers, but look at how much they have to lower the compression ratio! They also tend to have very little ignition advance, and most of them will only run on super-high octane fuels.
But since we're talking about a stocker 5M-GE and not some purpose-built monster, none of the above applies! You can make the A/F ratio as rich as you like, but it won't stop the onset of detonation if your inlet charge is too hot. The cast pistons won't take too much of a hammering before things go horribly wrong...
Anyway this is a non-issue really - intercooling is cheap, and extremely effective. I can't think of any reason not to use it in an application such as this.