PK numbers
I always hated how mopar castrated every 360 built with dished pistons.
By themselves the dish is not a bad thing.
It only becomes a problem when you swap out the factory cam, and swap in a 3/4 race cam and end up with no cylinder pressure for street driving, below 3000or so rpm.
But the cure is just a piston swap away. It's just that a lot of hotrodders seem to be too lazy to getRdone.
At the stock spec the 360 made about 137psi cranking pressure, at sealevel This is lots enough for what it was designed to do . But when you put a 340 cam into it, the pressure falls to about 123psi, so it gets pretty sucked out below 3000rpm, it still makes great power at 5000/5500.
The cure for the pressure loss is a higher stall for most guys, so the engine does not have to pull at sub-3000 rpms. But if you have a 4-speed, yur doomed. The proper cure is higher compression, usually pistons. By 8.8Scr the pressure is back to where it started ..... but why stop there? By 10/1 the pressure is up to 164psi, and now you got yourself a pretty Hot Rod.
But really, that cam is way to big for 3.21s, So lets sub in the next smaller cam and reduce the compression ratio for regular gas. The new magic number is 155psi at 9.4 Scr.
But guess what, at sub-3000rpm, the performance is only a lil better than the stocker was.
So like I said, by itself the dished pistons were not a bad thing; they did exactly what they were supposed to do.
But I like your use of the word castrated, altho in this instance, I think it's a lil harsh.
BTW; a V8 fires 4 chamber per revolution. So already, that is 25% more power pulses.
and a 225 has 37.45 cubic inces per piston, compared to 39.8 for the 318.
But in one revolution, the slant is sweeping 37.45 x3, versus the 318 sweeping 39.4x 4. So 112.35 compared to 159.2. That is almost 42% more to the 318. And that is why 318s have so much more torque; they are just able to move so much more air, at the same rpm.
Keep one thing in mind, that I earlier said;
If the mixture in the chamber is finished delivering it's push by 3.3 inches of stroke, the rest of the stroke is a net loss to the engine. The other pistons have to drag that piston around nearly 1.5 more revolutions, until it once again fires.
If a slanty was a steam engine, the 4.125 stroke would help it. But it ain't a steam engine.
The only time the long stroke helps the slanty is to make pressure on the compression stroke, with the abysmally low stock compression ratio, and with the factory cam. As soon as you change those, the advantage can rapidly become a hindrance.