I'm currently thinking about rebuilding the 460 in my '79 F150. It has had some recent engine problems, mainly low power when giving it gas (literally no power when going up hill), and acceleration has been sluggish as of late. My brother and I are interested in redoing the engine internals (camshaft, lifters, valves, pistons), pretty much everything besides the crank (hopefully), the block, and the valve covers. Maybe the intake manifold. Looking for low-end torque for this work truck, not for the drag strip. Any suggestions in parts and ways to put this together would be appreciated.

 

Stock carb 460 pistons are 22cc dish and your heads have 97cc chambers, so stock you were lucky to get 8.0:1 compression. If you were to use a set of flat-tops, you'd raise the compression to around 9.2.
A problem with 460s is the deck height varied over the years. Early 429/460s had a 10.300" deck height above the crank centerline. 73-later had a 10.322" That .022 adds up, especially when most carb pistons only have a compression height of 1.752 from the wrist pin journal center to the top of the piston .With the stock 6.605" rod, that leaves the piston top .040 down below the top of the block deck. Then we have the .043 gasket thickness above that, so you're talking .083" quench between the piston top and bottom of the head - that makes for a good chance of detonation and pinging. Best to get that quench to closer to ~050" to reduce the chance of detonation/pinging, so decking the block would help, OR you can use the taller compression height pistons meant for '94-97 trucks that used a 1.772 compression height That .020" higher piston reduces that quench distance to ~.062". Better, but not perfect. So ideally, taking .010 off the top of the block to square it up (Fords had terrible quality control - many can be off almost that much between each bank, or even along the length of the block gasket surface). I was lucky in that mine was only off .002 so I left it alone, and I'm 'suffering' with that .062 quench distance rather than spend another $200 to deck the block.
I did use Keith Black hyper 137 flat-top pistons with that taller 1.772 deck height, and a 3cc valve cut. With my slightly smaller chamber 91.5cc 94-97 EFI heads, that brought my compression ratio up to ~9.5:1

One thing that really wakes the 72-87 engine is to use the earlier (68-71) timing set. Ford retarded the crank gear 4° on the '72-86 for emissions purposes.

Camshaft choices are getting 'iffy' with quality, and so are lifter quality. Scotty J at Parkland Machine did a hardness test of various brand hydraulic flat-tappet lifters a few years ago.The results are to use the best lifters you can get - or even better would be to source a cam/lifters from him directly. https://www.460ford.com/posts/1705327/. Much has to do with the low zinc/low sulfur oils we're saddled with these days. No, the old trick of using Rotella (Diesel) oil doesn't work any more since that was also reformulated

 

You sure you don't just need to set the ignition timing and tune it up?
Granted, you're driving about the lowest po 460 there is, but it still should fly up hills
The old 1970 engine made 360 hp (429) and 365 hp (460)
Your 79 was down to 245 hp
Plan on using premium fuel if you build one up nice

 

1972-later were rated at NET horsepower (engine as it would be in chassis, with all accessories) 71-ealier were Gross HP (crank HP like on a dyno.) 72-later were also low compression. Some variants before 71-but not all- were low compression, some were high compression.
So anyway, yes, power was down on 72 -later for a multitude of reasons.
But you knew that...

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll clean up the carb and fiddle with the timing and tune to see if that helps.