Making Power 318

as stated above, a bone stock 318 will never be "fast" in many people's eyes but if everything is in good shape then it should at least be able to smoke a tire or be close to that, simple upgrades can be done (carb, intake, re-curve the dist) to get some decent daily driver fun out of it without having to do any major surgery. The first step is first, listen to the above posts and make sure what you already have is in decent condition before you continue, if you find obvious issues, then address those first.
I have a bone stock 360 out of a motorhome and I'm still using the motorhome distributor. Only thing not stock on the engine is intake and headers with a 4bbl edelbrock. It's not "fast" but it's a hell of a lot faster than my jeep and is a boatload of fun. I've tried to maximize what I have before opening up the engine.