I think engine masters (of the Motor Trend on demand Variety) did something with both bore stroke and ICL
I think:
3. Aggressive cam lobes vs. non-aggressive cam lobes, keeping .050" duration, LSA, ICL, and lift the same between the two
Would be most interesting.
I know it is outside of the scope of what you're talking about here, but I'll throw it out there on the off chance someone could figure out a way to do it - what would be really interesting is to run them for a long time like 100,000 miles and see if the super aggressive lobe was in fact as hard on parts as it is thought to be sometimes....
I think we have a pretty good handle on that one already. You can *hear* an aggressive lobe and added NVH usually isn't desired because of the outcome. In addition, the spring pressure requirements are higher. That may or may not be a deal breaker in and of itself, but in an application with say, 3/8" stem large valves, the spring pressure requirements go up considerably. Twelve years ago, FE's with hydraulic rollers hit a wall at 5500 rpm because most guys were running heavy valves in combination with aggressive lobes, such as the Comp XE or XFI lobes. Adding spring pressure helped, but you got to a point where you could overcome the lifter function.
Changing to a much less aggressive lobe enabled the rpm range to go up because you didn't have the valve weight to overcome with spring pressure. Changing to lighter valves on top of that opened the envelope up even more.
If you notice, most "aggressive" lobes are indeed made for more modern applications with 7mm or 8mm valve stems, etc. The aftermarket LS and Gen 3 Hemi guys can start to get into that sort of thing because their parts are a lot lighter in comparison to an FE, but a 100k miles is a long time.
Even if you got a handle on the valvetrain weights (most of your SBF aftermarket heads come with 7mm or 5/16" stem valves and beehive springs with light retainers), an aggressive lobe can smack the valves against the seats harder/faster.