1.surely an extra mm in conrod length would make a significnt difference in compression volume, hence up the compression ratio quite a bit, unless you did Muskie's trick of adding a 1mm plate under the barrels??
2. wrt the oil hole, in my experience "squirt holes" were always aimed under the piston to help cool the skirt and crown, I've never heard of them being used to squirt onto the cylinder wall, until now! It may be that this was a "containment action" introduced while the real "root cause" of the problem was being established - this was the process we always used in a manufacturing environment to protect the customer from failures when it was taking time to find what the real issue was ie we introduced a containment action quickly which may have cost money to implement but protected the customer from the failure going forward, to buy time to find the real issue....