How does cid make power?

Rat Bastid said

But you discount or ignore RPM. You get more firing cycles with more RPM. RPM IS horsepower. That is the central theme of engine building. Torque does NOT make a car quicker or faster. That takes RPM.

If you have more RPM (and can feed it) you can use more gear. More gear is a longer lever to move a car. Gear ratio is a far more effective lever than an increase in stroke is.

Click to expand...

Totally agree - that's the 'work' part. Work is 'per unit time', which means RPM has to be part of it - should have made that more clear.
You get torque from the force exerted by the expansion event - but add them up and you get HP.

Adding CID without adding flow pulls the RPMs down where peak occurs because heads get saturated/choked. But CID, backed up by adequate flow, will always increase HP at all points. Kinda like you keep saying: it has to be apples:apples. A 408 with stock 273 heads is a pineapple.