Have been building and tinkering with engines for almost 30 years and have heard all kinds of different opinions on everything from oil, to octane, head torquing specs, engine break in, and even engine storage. Have heard that if left sitting long enough the springs will collapse, the lifters will fail, and the cylinders will be trashed. Well, I agree that after a long storage time it is probably a good idea to go through the engine and freshen it up, but I have also seen engines sitting in fields for years that were given some fresh gas and fired up and continued to run on farms for years. Yeah, maybe not peek performance, but not immediate fails either. Well here is a video of a Nascar engine that was rebuilt and dyno tested 20 years ago. It then sat on the shop floor. These guys put it back on the same dyno and gave it a go, then a full tear down. While the cylinders are very rusty to start, they fogged it first. They then tore it down. The guy doing the video has done a few on these engines and while long are fun to watch and very informative. The guy working on this is Lake Speed's son and currently does research and design for Total Seal and has some pretty cool tools to check the cylinder finish. The rusting of the cylinders caused some pitting, which would caused some oil burn, but did not effect the power. Have a look and make your own choices.

The storage subject was talked about not too long ago. Even had that video in the thread too.

Rotate engine while in storage?