my understanding is, that it's not so much the crank dipping into the oil laying oin the sump, but more to reduce drag as the crank moves through the oil "fog" in the crankcase. with the cranksaft spinning at high velocity through the engine, and oil seeping out both sides of all 9 bearings, a tremdous amount of fog is created. The drag on the crank must be quite a bit. how much difference does less wind resistance make to a car? Imagine that same drag full of droplets of oil.
The reduction in weight also doesn't hurt none.

A14force.

I'd like to offer something productive to what you have just said but I'm not of the capacity at the moment.

Tell me one thing though, are you serious about the 'fog'? We are talking about push rod engines, if you are considering oil 'fog'-drag to be a hinderence on pushrod, block-cam engines, then I suggest you might want to consider increasing performance on other aspects of the engine.

Getting stuck up on crank knife edging is dangerous (and very costly). If you have the big ideas and big cash, then spend the money..... other wise cut the weight, do your best in shaping what you have left after the cut. And then drive the bloody thing knowing that you did what you could afford.

The cost is not an issue. My old man has been turning on lathes since the mid 60's. I'm just gonna give it to him, and tell him, "I bet you can't knife edge this as good as this guy did!" (Insert photo of Gary's crank) The old reverse psychology can work wonders (at times) and he'll make a sweet job of it for zero dollars. (apart from maybe $20 for electricity, since his big lathe is at my mums house)
If I was paying for it, then yeah, I wouldn't be so gung ho about wanting to do it. If I was loaded, I'd prolly run a dry sump set up, and the scavange pump helps to cut down the fog too. But thats well outside my means, so I wont be doing that.

I guess, when we're dealing with so little HP in reality, every little bit counts if your going for performance,
the engine was designed with maximum drivability/efficiency when it was designed, we take many compromises when we make performance,

if your going for maximum, it's a must, if you can afford it, why not..

A14force how about stroking it with the knife edge and use mazda d5 conrods
which have 40mm crankpins and around 130mm c-c

I don't have my notebook handy, what are the factory measurements compared to the ones you're talking about D?

clive.. did u fix the crank ?? how it goes..

late reply but the d5 conrods mean from my understanding you can gain 2.5mm in stroke
from your crankpins from 45mm to 40mm in resizing. That will give your a15 an 84.5mm
stroke which with 77.5mm is 1594cc with enough meat for boost.