corvette L98 head swap

If I do this swap its gonna raise my compression to about 10.1:1 isnt it? Which would force me to use premium wouldnt it? Id kinda like to avoid that but Im pretty sure to get more power Im gonna have to do something about my heads. Any recomendations on what heads to use that wont make me use premium? Or...would I be better off port and polishing my stock iron heads. Im wanting to have around 350hp nothing extreme. This target hp might be in the stock heads range. What do you all think?

Well compression makes horse power so you could try to figure out at what compression ratio it will start detonating and force you to use premium. Unfortunately if you want serious horse power you really have very little choice on using higher octane gasoline. As I said before compression is a very big part of HP so in order to get a lot of power out of an engine raising the compression is a big way to do it.

And I realize that but is 350hp considered extreme? I would think that anything over 400hp would be serious horsepower. Maybe there are other things I can do that will get me to 350hpish...

Well since the LS1's came from the factory with close to 300 I think that getting 350 out of your 350 is asking alot of it and if you're willing to put that kind of money into that engine don't be stupid and expect it to run even close to well on 87 octane fuel. Plus if you have that kind of money why can't you afford to put slightly more expensive gas in your car???

Um, im not entirely sure that vette L98 heads are any different than the F body heads. So i dont see the point. If you are looking to make more power and run lower octain, i suggest a set of vortec heads. do some checking into hot rod magazine and such, they have a project engine that is called agent 87, that made 408hp and ran on 87 octain gasoline. using the GM 260hp small block as a starting point, and adding some minor bolt ons including the vortec heads and cam swap.