That's right Keith you know the game pretty good. For P7 Bantam the VE from what I understand is just how well the motor breathes. Back to the basics of the motor is just a air pump. Air needs brought in and back out and fuel needs brought in and burned. Yes even with a lower cr you can still have a some what high VE with a good camshaft that has good valve timing. Doesn't even have to be real high duration. Lot's of other factors that can pick up where other things lack. The valve timing is very important. I like to think of the valve timing as of how big the camshaft actually is or acts. When valve over lap comes into play it creates a whole new ball game. You can take a cam that's 276/284 @ .050 on a 108° lsa for an example that only has 64° of valve over lap. You can forget those big duration #s at .050 because the way it opens the valves. Now you have some what of a small cam that is set up for say a more efficient cylinder head and geared towards torque. For 6000-8000 rpm if a motor starts to breathe better as the rpm goes up then VE should go up or down depending on the combo. It's just like the curve of how the motor makes hp and tq. It starts off lower then climbs and for a while and maybe quit climbing then maybe it picks back up again. But either way it eventually quits climbing and starts to fall off.