318 Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
You have a good point there but do understand that he is in a machine shop. Certain parts of a certain bud will require certain steps to be taken. If you are rebuilding an engine yourself, these are some of the steps you could take.
Otherwise, a simple bore and home is the basic first step in correcting an old block. My last 360 only required a hone. $60 then after that, it was the rotating assembly cost from scratch with only crank and rods.
$200 for slugs, a few bucks for rings and bearings.
$350 for balancing. For approx. $700, I had my short block ready to go with gaskets.
Heads are a tricky thing. If you can not afford porting and your looking to go fast with a 318, the absolute cheapest way to increase air flow then is with 360 heads. These will not out flow well done (ported) 318 heads but will help a good bunch. (LA engine of course or head milling, but that costs $$$ Magnums are a bit hard to raise the comp ratio because the heads are the same between 318 & a 360.)
I made due with a on the cheap build I documented here some years ago for fun. A dead on compression '79 - 318 with bolt on's and a cam went 15.14 @ 89mph OOTB with tires spinning away at the line on a 40* day. Stock engine & heads.
Wider tires dropped me into the 14's.
For a small cam engine, (216 @ .050) it was a great return on parts used.
Making power like he did sometimes requires that you spend some money on machine work. You could allways sub out the reconditioning of the OE rods for new scat light weight rods and use KB slugs OOTB.
If your engine is in good shape as is, just start bolting parts on and in it.
Remember there's more power in air flow than compression. The lack of compression may make the bottom end a little more soggy than normal. Re- equipped drivetrain s become needed anyway, it will need more converter and gear to I er come the short fall of being a not so perfect combo.