When I was hanging around a few race teams back in the day. What they would do is change the crank and rod bearings every so often. Never pull the engine. Just drop the pan. Remove the caps, mike the journals. Replace with new bearings and bolts. Never seen them have a bottom end problem. We're talking about the old 427 big block chebys used for roadracing. A lot of weight spinning around. Think you could do something like this to keep the engine alive longer.
