I don't know if you ever ran across piston ceramic coatings, but they can do a lot of cool stuff now.
You can send your pistons, valves, even head away, and they'll coat it in ceramic, to keep heat out of the engine more, and also coat piston skirts in a kind of permanent lubricant.

I plan on trying in one day soon when I have a chance

 

Yes I'm familiar with the ceramic coatings. They won't help if your cylinder walls are soft. My dad had a m8d 80s jetta diesel rebuilt. They just bored it out a size overand put in bigger pistons. In six months it was shot. Cast iron block but with some kind of hard surface coating. Found out that the only way to make it last was to sleeve all 4 holes. Aluminum even more than cast iron

 

I'm not sure I share the enthusiasm some have towards those VW's... I mean the cars are really nice, but not as great as it might seem.
I know a few people that have em, really great MPG, but one has 750,000 km's, and its 3rd engine crapped the bed and it's parked in the bush.

Out of any vehicle I've ever been in, the VW passenger compartment feels the tightest, even gusts of air and stuff never make it past the weatherstripping. I don't know how to explain it, but other auto makers could take note in that department.

 

It's been done and proven by Scheid (Billet Aluminum Cummins Race Engine Photo 1) and Mazda (MAZDASPEED Motorsports Development ). Mazda is the first diesel to win the Indianapolis 500 ever.

 

Racing use and daily use are totally different.
Lots of racing engines are rebuilt after low hours, because they just fail.
Some on the high end up the spectrum need rebuilding like every 24 hours.

I doubt a lot of wear longevity issues would show up in a race application like they would in a passenger vehicle that is expected to last 200,000 miles without major hiccups.