Yup, that's what makes it an unusually beefy design aspect on a low-output six-cylinder engine made of iron…but less unusually so on one made of aluminum. That observation is about as far as I can go; for more specifics you'd want to talk to Bill Weertman (who's still around) and ask him. I haven't; our conversations tend to centre around the Slant-6 for some strange reason.
:lol:
(Also, the forged cranks were used up through the middle of 1976 production, cast cranks after that. The big change for '75 was the cylinder head redesign.)