I do have faith in my engine guy as he even called in a few of his friends to check his work .. I did the HEI upgrade and while it did vastly improve the pre ignition issue the vacuum advance had to be plugged off no matter what we did (springs). The assesment they came to was whomever did the porting read an article out of a 90's HPP took a die grinder and went to town!

I do plan on keeping car.. Thanks for the encouraging words and I'll start a thread as I get into the swap to show progress. Fingers crossed on a positive outcome.