[serialk11r]

Yea I've seen that page before. I believe the dips are EGR and intake manifold resonance related drops in VE. Then as you go more extreme, LIVC effects kick in and drop VE further giving the higher fuel efficiency.
EDIT: My bad, that graph is for cam advance. Higher advance gets more EGR which has a big effect, full retard probably starts increasing pumping losses dramatically at the top of the stroke. Full retard is known to work in Toyota's "VVT-iW" so there's probably some very careful exhaust cam tuning that needs to happen for it to work.

As you can see, going to 50 degrees gets you 1.5% less fuel consumption compared to 10, which is not bad, but it's not that much. I believe hydraulic cam adjusters are slow enough that going to 50 degrees would result in a noticeable worsening of throttle response.

Regarding regrinds, I made a mistake, I thought you could grind down the base circle to get more duration on the Honda since it's got a rocker arm, but I just realized you might have to grind both sets of lobes to make it work, if that would even work at all, and that would cost more money. You could also have the lobes welded with extra material but I heard the reliability is not great with that method.