OldSStroker, I appreciated your thorough explanation of the physics involved, right up to the end where you made the above comment. But thank you just the same.
After reading the above I called BME and let them smack me around as well as they say to try to maintain oil temperature between 200-220 deg on an edurance application. http://bmeltd.com/rod_maint.htm

He explained to me as well that as the connecting rod heats up and the housing bore gets larger that the hammering due to the extra clearance fatigues the rod. The bearing shell does not necessarily lose crush as the material has a close enough expansion rate, but the key is to keep the clearance growth under control.

So I am now officially pimp slapped, but more importantly re-educated and am better for it.

Thank you for everybody's helpful input. Now on to determining the proper static oil clearance for an endurance application with an oil cooler......

Thank you rskrause for starting this thread.

 

were you guys thinking that i was saying the hole would get smaller? i went ahead and deleted that response to prevent confusion, but i do know they expand from the most classic
http://netnet.net/~brewhaus/Images/QtrBbl.jpg