Though I agree with John(pittsburghracer),Monte also has a point.If your running a class car(dog chasing it tail)thing and want to extract every but of power than all those costly things need to be considered.But most adverage street,strip and budget bracket cars need to consider the best bang for the buck.Take for example a competative class car may have more in their engine top half as most competative bracket cars have in their entire drive train.
We see some home or small shop bracket engines run competatively for many seasons and then we see engines built at some of the top shops never get out of the burnout box.Many can overcome a loss of a low buck engine and recover but to loose a high doller race engine can be a major setback to most.Either way a loss is a loss and it's only as serious as to what your budget can afford and one can mentally handle.Good advice is to build within you means and ability.
To add some metalluragical theory based on studys by a professor at Univ.of Pittsburgh and others, hardened steel against a porius metal such as cast iron and cast aluminium,(both soft)has a better wear characteristics than hard against hard.Bronze is both hard and dense especially when other metals are added like tin.Put this question to block manufactures as to why lifter bores and other wear areas are not bushed from the factory.Before some one jumps up and down about rod wrist pin bushing being bronze or bronze lined it is mainly to eliminate friction and eliminate a hard surface against a hard surface.Before rod bushing the harden pin was a press fit at the rod and rotated in the piston bores.