[70RamAirIIITA]

Hey gang, I'm in the process of purchasing a rough but solid '70 T/A less engine and tranny. It does still have the original 3:55 Safe-T-Track rearend. Rather than spending a ton of time trying to track down the #'s-matching RAIII 400 (WS block/#12 heads) and M-21 tranny, short of laying out big bucks for an LS6, I was thinking about building the crap out of a 454 and dropping it into the bird (painted Pontiac silver-blue of course ).

I've come across a couple of different sets of heads and was wondering which would work better for high-performance; the first set are '73 open chamber oval-port 049's off a 454, the second set are 67-68 closed-chamber oval port 215's off a 396. I also came across a '74 454 long block; from the research I've done so far, supposedly the '72-'74 454 blocks contained a higher percentage of nickle. The same guy with the 215's has a '66 396/427 2-bolt block (no crank, rods or pistons) for sale as well.

Is one combination better than the other? I was thinking of dropping in the big block due to early 2nd-gen Camaro's coming with the optional 454 and it "should" be a direct bolt-in - am I correct? Any advice would be greatly appreciated - thank you in advance!

Randy