Stopping the knock: Lower compression and ported heads...

Thanks HT, I am closing in on a fix. It may not be the perfect one, but it will improve things.
I'm not sure if you read through every post in the numerous threads, but I think that my situation came down to the simple fact that I had too much compression to run on the 91 octane CA unleaded fuel. I ran 110 leaded and the car ran really strong, actually faster than it ever did before. This told me that the knocking/detonation could be eliminated. If all I ever did was to drive the car locally, I could have just ran the 110 fuel at $10 per gallon.
I decided to lower the compression.
There are many ways to lower the compression. I chose to use thicker head gaskets. Some don't like that method and felt that it wouldn't work in part because my idea takes away whatever "quench" I had. Their reasoning was that the 440s of the mid 70s had no quench and even though they had 8.0 compression ratios, they had detonation problems. I don't dispute that, but I also feel that it isn't exactly a direct comparison. I have aluminum heads with better port design. I have an aluminum intake and headers. This engine runs cooler and breathes better than any stock 440. My cam has a much later intake closing than any stock cam.
When I get to the point where I need to pull the engine, I will probably replace the pistons with ones that have a dish on the valve side and a quench pad on the other. At that time I could also zero deck the block and run a standard .039 Fel Pro head gasket. This would get me quench and a reasonable compression ratio at the same time.
Another thing for the guys against the "thicker head gasket idea": I ran a .060 Cometic gasket in 2006 and the car ran great on 91 octane gas. I was able to set the timing to 35 degrees @ 3000 rpms and had zero knocking of any kind.
The Cometic gaskets came in yesterday but I don't know how soon I'll get to work on the car. As is often the case, the week suddenly got really busy!