L31MaxExpress
I'm Awesome
Go with a Holley 4150 carb. Im doing the swap soon in my 89. TBI is not horrible but with the performance mods I doing, it wont work. Im going with big port, big valve aluminum heads, high lift longer duration cam, full length headers, etc. I prefer port injection on a fuel injected engine. Chevy went real cheap and went with a slightly better choice over a stock carb. Should have used port injection from the beginning. They had it on their 3.8 V6 cars and other vehicles. Ford and Mopar had it.
I wouldnt worry too much about drivability with a carb. I have always had good luck setting up my Holleys to where I wouldnt have to constantly mess with it to run. Most of mine had no chokes, never had a problem starting even in cold Iowa winters. Granted, it wasnt as nice as a fuel injection start up, but pump the gas twice and start it up, let it run a couple minutes and it was ready to go.
With a carb, you only have 2 reasons for a no start/run condition-no spark or no fuel. 2 very easy things to diagnose along side a road with minimal tools.
I prefer carbs on a car but hate carbs on a motorcycle, lol.
TBI can and will run that just fine. A 454 TBI unit has no problem supporting 500 HP.