About 4-yrs ago I was in your same place, Randy. The only thing that changed my course of action was the fact that the '72 lowdeck block I had revealed a slight crack that was in an area when it could've been fixed by drilling a hole at the end of it, but I opted not to put an expensive rotating assembly inside it only to probably have it all blown out the bottom or my B1 heads ruined from breakage. So I went from doing a stock blocked 496 to my alum. 540.

In the end for what I was planning to do with the car the Keith Black lowdeck aluminum block was basically a must. Completely setup for nitrous, it made over 900HP N/A and adding two big guns on top of it, the stock block was not going to live long at all.

But for what you're attempting to do the stock block will be okay in N/A form and you won't have to go overkill on parts to use, especially in a fairly light car. Get it as light as you can. My 25.5 '72 Dart was a tank. Ran a best of 9.16/149 at 3480#'s "on motor" with me in the seat. The car had the AlterKion frontend and ladderbar rearend, Glide and 4.10 gears, M/T ET Street's 30x13.5 DOT's.

Anyway, hope some of this info/pics help ya. Thats Chuck Millen of Best Machine Racing Engines with my motor he built back in '05. I flew to Michigan for the dyno session. If you can find the Sept. '05 issue of Mopar Muscle there is a complete article on it.

I don't get on the internet much anymore due to time, so if you want to chat or need info, feel free to contact me via PM's. Good luck and take care.

Wes