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

I'm almost betting many of us saw your combination and assumed, despite your described intent, you wanted to make the current sum of parts work best and all the problems that kept developing as time went by just frustrated all of us...

I guess it's kinda difficult to go back on this build unless you feel like taking the engine apart and going with lower compression slugs...but it seems to me if you want a big block car that's as docile as you describe immediately above, a simple lightly cammed 440 would be more up your alley. But, if memory serves, that's what you had before, right?