i dont doubt that stock rods are the weak point, but claiming they cant or wont live above 5500 is not true... I had a similar built 455 as the OP's back in the early 90's before better rods were readily available, did a budget but good quality rebuild with stock rods and beat the living crap out of that motor/car daily for almost 10 years & 100k miles, countless 6000 rpm shifts and racing anything I could day or night, beat many cars that came from out of town to cruise/race with mid to high 12 second time slips. Today its best to use stronger rods but well prepped stock rods can or should be able to handle 400-450hp up to 5500 without much problems.
Also good idea to keep compression around 10-10.5 on alum heads but if tuned right (cliff q-jet) and what sounds like less than ideal timing, detonation shouldnt be a concern with 91 or 93 gas... im in iowa in a decent sized 125k town and premium fuel isnt going anywhere, can get 93 10% eth or 91 straight gass pretty much anywhere in the city or surrounding smaller towns.
Also dont thing changing to a smaller cam would benefit anything in this case, just make less power than the current cam and OP never mentioned street manners being an issue, that cam is pretty tame for a 462.
10:1 with iron is a much bigger issue for detonation than 10.5 on aluminum... most stick to 9:1 for the average iron head street engine, and almost everyone with alum heads can do 10.5 with ease on premium fuel.
Lots of options to increase power for this engine & lots of opinions on how to do it, but 10.5 on alum heads with 91 octane should be very easy to do even without "A-game tuning". i run 10.72 with almost zero tuning, just a cliff built Q-jet and basic timing curve on the HEI... zero detonation on 91 gas and does low 11's with ease in any weather... been in use for almost 10 years now & lots of drag strip time.
My 72cc E-heads CC'd at 74.5, so factor that into the final compression, but bigger CC D-ports would be best for this to keep the D-port manifolds or headers.
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