you can take these to .060 over very easily. I wouldn't recommend sleeving an engine just as a matter of course. the only things on your list that would raise compression is new pistons, if you use ross or venolia they will cost $800 a set. Although there is some head combination that already gives you something like 8.5-1 (several people will chime in here) with stock pistons. Milling the head is the next easiest, but not so cheapest, I wish I had milled mine, I may still do it. New rods won't change compression, and the old ones are fine, if you want a stronger rod I think a 270 gmc rod will fit provided you cut the big end down to fit the crankshaft, (if no one here knows if these rods clear the cam, I can find out easily enough probably) however they are longer and will require custom compression height pistons, which ross at least will adjust for no charge. Milling the block will only make your pistons stick out the top of the block requiring once again, custom piston compression height. I got an RV cam and it seems to work fine, you have to be careful with RV cams and compression you can't run the cam with too much compression, but here again I don't know the exact numbers, but some one will jump in I am sure. One thing that will improve compression is over boring. You can probably expect to spend considerably more than $2000, more like $3000, you will probably have a hard time finding a machine shop that knows anything about these engines. I just finished one, it took two years and about 10 trips to different machine shops, The cam grinders lost my cam, I never did get it back. the list goes on, but it is great.
Last edited by brokenhead; 01/12/2013 7:58 AM.
