Thanks for the detailed explanation Brent. I understand now.
It would seem that ALL FE aluminum blocks suffer from inherent structural design deficiencies. Other alloy OEM blocks (not sure about aftermarket) don't suffer from this at all.
I pulled my heads on my 88K mile LS7 (Z06) engine and the ring sealing/pattern was perfect. That was at elevated HP levels too. It has zero
oil consumption and very little, if any, blow-by.