to stroke or not to stroke?

273 said
An running engine only makes power (horsepower is the most popular way to rate it). People like to point out that a dyno doesn't measure horsepower but torque. But that's not true a dyno measure torque and at what rpm which we know is horsepower. You can't have one without the other (rpm and torque) there inseparable. Horsepower is the only thing that moves and accelerates your car.

As for the OP stroke or not to stroke depends on many things, cubic inch doesn't directly make power, top end does eg. Carb, heads, intake, headers, cam, bore size etc..
I like to think engine size as a powerband selector.
A bigger engine is gonna make power in a more streetable range. For the most part you want to keep a street engine under 6500 rpm and in the 0.8-1.2 horsepower per cubic inch. If you need more rpm or more hp per cubic inch your gonna needing a larger engine.

It's often more practical to look at torque since it tends to be more static- seeing that an engine makes 50 less horsepower at 1000 less RPM doesn't tell you that it will run and pull better, seeing that it makes more torque sooner does. Neither one's irrelevant and neither's unimportant. A motor with strong torque will perform better with less gear, a motor with more horsepower will run stronger up top even if it has to have more gear to get to its peak in the same time.

The two are not the same, and do not uniformly increase together throughout the rpm range. They both have separate peaks, climbs, and ranges. The rest of your post though- absolutely.

318willrun said
J par and I had a conversation about some folks with strokers calling "fish stories" to some folks results with stock stroke motors. I say, because someone spent the money to build a stroker, it doesn't automatically make them the "king fish". I say stock stroke motors can, and do perform extremely well (but I've consistently said stroker motors work and perform), and thus the reason for this thread. We wanted to see E.T.'s, and not to say you should or shouldn't stroke your motor, but just to see results (more results than opinions).

Both can run well, and many strong motors are actually small displacement. Strokers seem to really shine in that mid-range, where that high 10s-low 12s area car/truck can retain taller highway gears and have great street manners for driving whether it be everyday or only occasionally.