The engine I used for my Demon came from an RV, it has the extra cooling passages and was a 73. It had a forged crank with 6 pack rods. However I went with eagle rods and a NOS forged crank with edelbrock heads. The extra cooling holes in the block to head deck are closed off by the head gasket and cylinder head. Unless your engine had the funky setup with the water pump housing that tied into the cylinder heads pretty much everything will work if you want. I went with aluminum water pump housing and intake to cut weight. There aren't any hard set rules as far as internals go and you won't really know on crank and rods til you get it apart. Mine did not have a six pack damper but was the thin forged crank set up. The one thing on some RV engines is they use a 5/8 tapered seat spark plug. Just about all 440's from that time frame were lower compression and can actually drop into the upper 7's once the deck height, head volume etc are actually figured. Don't know if I've answered some of your questions but one thing is those engines did t usually rack up a lot of miles. Mine was bored .030. Any other production type head will bolt on, if you go with the RV heads make sure the gaskets have the holes for the extra cooling around the spark plugs. If your building it for a truck and are after grunt, you may not have to do a whole bunch as far as compression. Put a low end cam in it and run that dude on regular unleaded and enjoy. You didn't state what your goals are.
