Looking to buy/build 500-600 fwhp 360

Lurch59 said
Surely there must be a way to check for deck height before assembly. I'll have to do that, because we might as well try for maximum compression on pump gas. I've kind of resigned myself to milling the cylinder heads to reduce the chamber volume. I don't think milling heads is very expensive. We can just mill the block to make sure we have zero deck height, but the kit does not show flat top pistons. So how do you get a zero deck height when the pop up piston is sticking up proud to the block?

Unfortunately it's tricky to do without the crank and at least one piston and rod installed. Something to consider is the shape of the combustion chamber, quench distance and head material have more effect on detonation resistance than static compression ratio alone. You can have an engine with 9.5:1 compression with open-chamber iron heads and it'll ping on 91 octane but one with 10.5:1, decent quench and aluminum heads will be fine (NOT including the effect of valve timing on dynamic compression).

My understanding is the Icon 9978 pistons aren't "pop-up". It has a quench ring around the outer edge with a slight dish in the middle and some good-sized valve reliefs. The quench area is intended to be flush with the top of the block deck so no part of the piston protrudes out the top of the cylinder unless you intentionally mill the decks for it. That type of piston on a stock-stroke 360 would be in the mid-9s for static compression but the 4" stroker crank increases that quite a bit just from the longer stroke length.