Great looking truck! I wish it was in my driveway. I was a teenager from 1956 to 1961, so I have a certain fondness for 3 inch stroke motors. It sounds like you want to keep your truck basically stock but have a little bit more power. I'm going to assume that the motor is in good shape, not burning oil, good compression and leak down, has a standard (3spd) transmission and stock rearend. Here's what I would do, can't express enough that this is my opinion. I would put it in my shop pull the exhaust and intake manifolds off, put on a cast iron Chevy 4 bl maniford, and a 500 cfm carb. Then I would use Corvette cast iron center dump, 2 1/2 inch exhaust manifolds and build a complete new exhaust system with a crossover ( H pipe ). Then I would just drive it for a couple months and see what I think. You might be surprised. If the motor was really tired and I had to do a complete new rebuild, (let me say here that most normal people probably wouldn't rebuild a 283, unless their going for factory stock), I would probably put in a " little " bit bigger cam ( below 224 deg duration at .050) and maybe a good set of Chev 1.94/1.50 heads and just have fun with it. One other thing, I'd put a HEI ignition on it. Both of my projects ( 32 Ford coupe and 57 Chev p/u ) are going to have 3 inch stroke sbc's. I'm building the motor for the p/u now. 350 4blt block, DZ crank, pre-64 Corvette solid lifter cam (097) , ported 461 heads, M21 transmission, and a quickchange rearend with ladderbars. In my opinion if you really want to run a 283/302 Chevs HARD, you need 4spd transmissions and some rearend gears 4:11, 4:56. These are just fun cars for me so I'm not real concerned about gas mileage, although the quickchange kinda helps.