Why would you leave the bearings alone? This motor is more than thirty years old and I'm not sure how many miles are on it. My wife said they have been all over the country with the motorhome (it was her moms motorhome) and could easily have over 100,000 miles. If I follow thru with this, I'm thinking honing the cylinders and new rings to help improve the sealing and while the rods are out, a new set of bearings. It seems only logical to me. And they can't be that expensive. I would think this would only help improve the reliability.

I don't know exactly what stall the converter has. I was only told that it has a higher stall than stock, but that it is also dependent on the power output of the engine...or something like that.