Yeah, I honestly don't really care what you think.   I mean, you offered such a strong counter-argument and everything (obviously, that's sarcasm), but I still just.... don't.... really.... care.   

When you get down to that level, you have to measure every piston and make sure that piston rock won't be a factor.  A 1.920" piston will rock enough to touch at .035".  A 1.175" piston will rock enough to touch with more than that.   Just depends on the combo.

Ford had trouble machining a block within .020".  I would venture to say that most of the pistons were not sitting perfectly at .005" in the hole. 

I've seen many blocks from ole' Henry come out that were off .020" (not 2, but 20) from end to end on one deck. 

I've even seen some aftermarket FE blocks that were off that bad..............

Thanks for all the comments , I feel much better about running it as is. I'm not a engine builder or a machinist but have been a truck mechanic for the past 40 yrs. and thought it would be interesting to assemble this engine myself, thinking it would be fairly straight forward but from the beginning its been anything but. Was planning to use my old block but it sonic tested too thin in spots and looking for a acceptable replacement took months and a few road trips. The only good block I could find was a D4TE with the extra main webbing that had already been machined. It looked great ,sonic tested good but had some pitting in one cylinder, thought I could just have a sleeve put in and didn't realize would have to bore and deck it again, 5 months at the machine shop , got it back and installing the camshaft, had to shave two cam bearings to .007 clearance  to get the cam to rotate freely. Then measuring the piston skirt clearance on one cylinder .002 larger than the rest . The main clearances all measured .0025 - .0032 so that was nice but now as I'm mocking up a piston and rod on cylinder no. 4 , it measures .007 in the hole and when I used the same piston and rod in no. 1 it was .005 in the hole.  Is this acceptable ? The machinist is a one man show been doing it for 50 yrs. very FE experienced and a really nice guy, he said he square decked it, maybe he's having vision problems.  Also, when I torque the main caps to even 70 ft. lbs. my camshaft becomes noticeably harder to rotate. Is this normal ? It makes sense to me that if the heads torqued down distorts the cylinder bores, that the mains torqued would distort the cam tunnel. I think I'll install new cam bearings and make a cam cutter out of an old camshaft as Brent suggested and see if that helps. Should fitting the camshaft be done with the mains torqued ?  I'm not looking for perfection , I realize this is a 50 yr. old truck block, just want to know what is acceptable. Even with all these issues, I am enjoying learning this process and feel very fortunate to have this forum with so many good people with so much engine knowledge and so willing to help.

Doesn't make sense that the mains affect the cam.  I've never seen that before.

.002" between ends of one deck isn't really a deal breaker.  Probably just had the block out of level a hair.  Doesn't take much over the length of the deck. 

I don't really care for .007" cam/bearing clearance, but it would most likely run ok.

      And then you have nitriding, and then you have the balancing affair which will be more time consuming, maybe even requiring heavy metal (both equaling greater costing  ) than other options; are you adding this all up?  And it's still only probably a 1010 alloy, with a certain sum of fatigue already invested! 

      Yes, I hate the idea of a "chinese" crank, but if you at least buy from one of the better suppliers (pay a few dollars more!) they generally work out O.K..   

      Scott.

I had Adney Brown work me up a 391 crank 5-6 years ago.  Did the snout work, did the flange work, turned the rod journals down to BBC size.  It was beautiful until it took about 8 pieces of heavy metal to balance it. 

There are also plenty of 4032 pistons that ask for more clearance and there are some 2618 pistons that want less.  Bore size, shape, and application has a lot to do with it.  Some of the BBF Mahle 4032 pistons want up to .005" of piston/wall clearance.  They also have some SBF 2618 pistons that setup at .0025".

At .0055" clearance, I doubt you'll ever hear anything.   I have had engines come back for freshen-up where we just honed a thou or so out to clean them up and put them right back together. In addition, Randy Gillis, lead sales/tech guy at Racetec (RIP), told me many times to run the 4032 at .005" on some of the applications that I was running.

As mentioned, other than the OCD part of it, I'd have no issue running it.  Just put a note in your build notes so that if you ever sell it, you'll look like you did your due diligence, measured everything, and made the executive decision.

Did the shop use torque plates?