Back in the mid-1980's when building strokers was beginning to take off, the late, great John Lingenfelter did a Hot Rod magazine article on his "budget" 496 stroker for his race car hauler. It involved welding a steel 454 crank and stroking it to 4.250". Pretty impressive article for the time. A friend that was my optometrist and had deep pockets decided he was going to do one exactly like the article. Several key points the article omitted, but he didn't realize until he'd already had the crank welded and reground and pistons bought, was that with the stock length rods and the extra stroke, the pistons hit the counterweights big time at the bottom of the stroke. So after throwing the crank back into the crank grinder to remove nearly a 1/4" from all the counterweights on a fully counterweights crank. It took almost 23 pieces of Mallory to now balance the crank since so much counterweight was removed. Most stroker cranks today have counterweight clearance for longer than stock connecting rods, so shorter rods could cause an issue in some cases just like it did my friends. So before you pull the trigger on the crank, trust, but verify you don't paint yourself into a corner.
