They are most definately flat tops, if you pull the pistons out of a TBI sammy, the match perfectely to the hc pistons from lowrange. You have to think, its going from 8.5:1 to 9.0 to one. Not much of a difference. When the machine shop saw they were labeled hc, he said "oh yea? lets look at the technical specs and see if its true." Sure enough, he said look, same as the B block pistons, while they are higher compression than stock for carbed, they are stock for TBI B blocks.
On to the cooling. Bought a new stock radiator today. Truck runs at 190-195 now. The lowrange radiator was causing the overtemp issue. I'm just happy its at that temp considering the forecast.