[MARKDTN]

It's your truck and you can do whatever you want with it. Why anybody would put a Hemi in a Chevy truck is beyond me, but whatever. Hemi vs: LS HP and Torque numbers are similar.

I don't know why you have had so much trouble with LS stuff, you are one of a few. Just as a point of reference, my '01 5.3 Tahoe has 310K+ miles on it. Water pump went 256K, Alternator went 199K, transmission went 299K. Never had a valve cover off. Never had a starter or A/C compressor. Everything on it still works. It still uses less than a quart of oil in 5K miles and it's not black on the stick at change time. Towed trailers. Ran hard. Radiator tank cracked about 260K so I got a new one but the cooler fitting leaked. It was slipping on the way home one day and the fluid was like 3 qts low and black. I changed the filter and it went another 40K before it lost 4th gear at 299,956 miles.

If I were you I would buy/build a decent Gen 1 small-block and put that in. It will be a lot less work than putting a Hemi in it.