I’m building a LA 318 out of a 74 satellite with the most amount of stock parts and cheap mods as possible. I’m new to all this and I don’t have a lot of money to work with .
looping back to this, without knowing the rest of your set up it's hard to make an outright suggestion. but stock parts and cheap mods to me says that you're staying 2bbl or running a basic dual plane manifold, factory or maybe performer, weiand or something with a small 4bbl and factory exhaust manifolds.
if that's the case a good choice would be the melling SPD-22. it's hydro lifter, would work with factory valve gear and you don't have to change springs, and it's cheap.
ultimately what's going to kill the performance potential is that factory low compression. there's no real work around on that-- milling heads and thin head gaskets are just a half measure. but if you don't over cam it and over carb it, something like that should run okay if you dial in the rest of the package. hot ignition curve, trans set up and some okay gears would make a bunch of difference.