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Right well.. it's been a little while since I last updated this post.. and that's not to say there hasn't been bits going on, i've just been so absurdly busy I keep forgetting to take photos! For starters I finally moved out of my parent's house and got my first property, a decently sized little flat which has been an absolute rollercoaster of emotions and made and already very fast-moving year suddenly jump 3 months in the blink of an eye! But getting back to the part you're all here for the car & engine although I have to pre-warn you as with alot of the recent engine-related posts it's quite nerdy! After sprucing up the cylinder heads I wrapped those up and stuck them up on the shelf back in March and moved on to removing the pistons from the engine. I flip flopped back and forth exactly what I was going to do with the internals of the engine and to what extent I was going to take it all apart - In the end I decided to not remove the crank & crank bearings down to a few factors, namely the fear of the main journals going out-of-round and replacing the main cap studs & bolts with ARP items which can get expensive already ontop of having shelled out for ARP head studs etc. As well as this I decided on retaining the stock internals again because the rod journals are known to go out of round if you go with ARP rod bolts and there's so much drama when it comes to forged items if you're on a budget it's such a headache! - I'm glad I did this in the end because as I type this my lights might simply turn off at any moment due to the fact the flat didn't come with a pot to piss in! With all of that I moved on to removing the Cam, lifters, etc and painting the engine block. All very easy and I made a couple of youtube videos covering the topics: https://youtu.be/4Nu4iKF605k https://youtu.be/1LR8d22JWXc https://youtu.be/8iSihhg9jcA And that neatly brings me on to where I am now, with freshly honed cylinder bores, measured tolerances & bearings and ready to assemble it all again, but as they always say - THIS THREAD IS USELESS WITHOUT PICTURES which was half my reason for a lack of update, i simply keep forgetting so lets see... Nicely cleaned up & painted block: Honed Cylinder bores: Pistons ringed & ready to go!: and the engine block again, this time featuring considerably more pistons! As for the nerdy bits in regards to tolerances and clearances, here are my findings regarding the top & Middle compression rings and rod bearings: OEM Top Ring clearances: Production - 0.23‐0.44 mm Service - 0.23‐0.5 mm Mine - 0.5mm - so right on the upper edge of a "serviced" engine but It's not the end of the world. OEM Second Ring clearances: Production - 0.44-0.7mm Service - 0.44-0.76mm Mine - 0.56mm - well within even production specs so i'm quite happy with this! Piston Rod Bearing clearances: Production - 0.023-0.065mm Service - 0.023-0.076mm Mine - 0.051mm - Only measured using plastigage but considering this is right in the middle of the range i'm quite happy with this And with that the lower end of the engine block is all back together and i've got 95% of the new parts required to close up the engine too! If you're a fan of shopping lists boy do I have a fun one for you, in the above pics you're looking at: Brand new intake manifold - /w gaskets, fuel rails, injectors, throttle body & map sensor (purchased "used" but it's very much as fresh as a daisy!) Head gaskets LS7 Lifters /w new lifter trays New Cam Timing gear, chain & guide (required for the removal of VVT) New Sensors & plugs all over New cam retainer plate New Front Timing cover /w seal & Gasket New Rear main cover /w main seal More gaskets - Valley cover & Exhaust manifold New front Pulley ARP Cam Bolts ARP Exhaust Manifold Bolts ARP Head Studs ARP Pulley bolt & More bolts, brackets & otherwise as well as the bits I showed off in previous posts. All that really leaves to close up the engine for good is a pair of new rocker covers as mine are rather nasty, a new valley cover simply because I want to and the new Sump pan & pickup tube which comes with the engine swap kit. Next weekend I'm going to get the new Cam, lifters, timing bits and perhaps even the refurbed heads back on and in a way the engine build is then "done"

If car is NA i find it unlikely to have issues with rods even if abused. If overboosted with FI non built engine w/o forged internals .. but imho one can fsck up engine in this case irrelevant of FD ratio. Short gear ratio gearset + FD is what i'd love to see in mine (so that 1st & 2nd gear stays somewhat same, but other gears come closer down). Pitty that especially former costs more then i'd willing to pay for that.

Short answer is no. But I see the logic in what you are saying/thinking. Ratio wise you could achieve this by just changing the diff ratio which would either raise/lower all gears as a set at once. No need to change the actual gears in the box itself. But in the real world it wont really offer any extra rod protection. I think as long as you are not doing 1/4 mile drag racing or traffic light/0-60 launches then I don’t think you’ll be winding up the drivetrain enough to damage the engine because of low down torque. The way I see it, as long as you already have some momentum when going for the throttle you wont have that situation where you have a static drivetrain reluctantly taking the low down torque/rotational mass of the engine.