Hmm, you wanna be a hero, eh? Well lets see here...... Take your old motor and do the standard boring (.030) and griding (.010) or polishing. I would try northernautoparts.com for a rebuild kit, they have the cheapest 350s going. I would choose the upgrade for clevite bearings, fel-pro gaskets, dual timing chain, brass freeze plugs, and a comp cam though. ARP rod, main, and head bolts would be nice if you can afford them. You could turn some serious RPMs with out having to worry. I love the fact that my daily drive can turn 6,500 and its only a 330hp motor, haha, overkill. Drop that in and worry about the headers later, thats an easy change. You might as well save up for a decent set of headers than blowing what you have left on $100 cheapies. $300 on up will get you decent headers. Don't waste your money on hypereutectic pistons, they're brittle high silicon junk. They are harder, but when just one little thing goes wrong KABOOM. They don't take sudden abuse well and will shatter, talk to your machinist, he'll tell you. They like to rip off just below the wrist pin. Some places refuse to sell them because of the high amounts of problems. Moly rings are good, but a PIA to get seated and cast will do a nice job in my opnion.
So....
$469 for heads (gmpartsdirect)
$318 for the intake (paceparts)
$20 for intake gaskets (paceparts)
$334 for the engine kit with uprgades I suggested (northern)
$47 for headbolts (northern)
$18 for mainbolts (northern)
$40 for rodbolts (northern)
($125-$150 if you want roller tip rockers, but we wont add it up, your stock ones will work)
$1,246 for just that so far. Alot $250 for shipping, paint, oil, coolant, plugs and the little nickle and dime things.
We're at $1,500 now. Go hog wild at the machine shop, resize the rods because of the new bolts, maybe line bore it, but don't touch the heads, they're great out of the box. Have the machine shop assemble the motor if you are the least bit unsure. They may also let you assemble it there under guidance for a little off the bill. You should be about out of money by now. Take whats left and buy some MSD stuff or headers. If you get new plug wires, go MSD, instead of buying stock ones and then upgrading later. If you do this, then you'll have the TBI brother to my motor in my '83.
Later
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You got me researching all kinds of crap on this now. I just got my comp catalog in the mail and these cams are listed for TBI...
12-304-4 .406/.406 201/206 111 seperation
12-388-4 .425/.440 206/212 108 seperation
12-249-4 .434/.444 206/212 112 seperation
