Originally Posted by zippy

The main reason that the ring seal issue comes about on a stroker is the location of the rings. When you make the rod longer and add stroke, you end up pushing the piston rings up high on the piston. The closer the rings are together, the less effective they are. Another problem with making the stroke longer and adding a longer rod is that the piston skirt is much shorter. A short skirt piston commonly doesn't go up and down perfectly centered. It allows the piston to rock slightly as the piston is pushed up and pulled down. This exact same thing showed up when GM decided that the classic 454 wasn't good enough for the heavy duty trucks and they built the 496. The 496 uses the same bore as the 454, but they brought the stroke from 4.00" to 4.37" and added in a longer rod. Right from the release of the 496 there has been oil consumption issue's and yet the 454 was pretty much a solid running engine that had to be worked even harder than the 496 due to it's lower hp and torque rating, yet didn't have oil consumption issue's.