[Captainfab]

Firts off, what is your intended useage of your truck with this engine?

The tall deck truck engines in stock form aren't a very good base for any kind of performance useage. They are good for low to mid range torque, with small port, small valve heads. And no, you cannot mill the deck down to a standard height. There are aftermarket as well as GMPP intakes for tall decks, but I believe they are most if not all single plane. Not the style of choice for a low rpm engine. The distributor is also specific to the tall deck engine.

With that said, the tall deck block itself can be built to quite the performance engine. The GMPP 572 big block crate engine is built with a tall deck block. But an engine like this isn't something a first time builder would want to tackle. I'm thnking you'l be stuck with building this engine with stock style tall deck pistons and rods. Then you will need to find a set of heads with the right size combustion chamber to get your compression where you want it. And of course the correct cam to go with the whole combination.