Very good informative thread.

I have a friend that had a 5th Gen Max. He was going to build a stroker motor and had the parts laying there to do it. He was already running boost on his VQ motor. I was told that he wanted to find out how much the engine would take before messing up, since he already had another engine waiting in the wings. I was told that he turned up the boost (obviously he was upping everything else he could to keep up) and from what I heard it held. He was somewhere up there in the power levels you're talking about, 450-500hp. Again, this was heresay although I could make a phone call to find out for sure.

Point is that the VQ motor may have some issues with the rods, but I have a sneaky hunch that may be more related to tuning than inherently weak parts. Again, this is only my opinion, but I did do a ton of nitrous squeezing into my 95 Max with a VQ30 motor in it and the motor is still perfectly fine. I think that tuning properly with a good eye on the a/f is the key.