[Christ]

I believe, generally, that anything you can do to maximize the power output of your engine without increasing the fuel it consumes to do so will give you better FE.

I call this "wasted potential". Since you're going to be building it on your own, with almost no money invested, and we all know that it can't hurt, but it seems that noone can provide scientific evidence that it will help, maybe you could just try it for yourself?

What's the worst that could happen? It doesn't do anything, and you have a nice talk piece under the hood that netted you a few hours mechanical experience and a few hours of cutting, grinding, shaping experience.

See what I'm getting at? At the very worst, your gains equal experience and knowledge, rather than FE and torque. You've nothing to lose by just "giving it the old college try" as it were.