building a mild Daily driver 318

318willrun said
Bigcasey, I'm gonna say this just in plain English: Does your 318 run well? I mean, oil pressure, no smoking or unnecessary noises? No overheating. If all this is well, Just throw a 4bbl, headers, and a 340 size cam in it. If you want to mess with heads, home port what ya got or cut some 360 heads. Complete your project for about 600 bucks. Your set to go. Stop beating your head against the wall over compression. I did EXACTLY what I mentioned above to a 318 in a '76 Dart. It ran 14.40's at 96 mph, with 3.21's and a tight factory stall 727. I'm sure a good 904 with a 2400 stall would have gotten me into the high 13's. Most would count that "mission accomplished" for what was spent on the 318.

That's the problem when compression comes into the conversation, it turns something that could be done in a couple of weekends and enjoy the car to something that's gonna sit on blocks for the rest of it life.
Start with the basic first and when you run out of things to do then tear into the motor. There's lots of power to be had before you need to tear into the long block. If your gonna do heads wait until you have the money to do it right and buy EQ's or something.