383 build help one piece at a time

A stock rebuild with slightly better than stock cam on this engine would probably get you what you are looking for. If you are planning on pulling the heads later for more work, freshen up the bottom end, drop in a little better cam, and run lead substitute for awhile if everything looks good on the heads. Do that and plenty of research in the meantime to decide what if anything you want to do to the heads. If you don't want to deal with lead substitute or if anything looks jacked up with the heads, the machine shop shouldn't charge you any more labor to swap the valves if you are having them do the seats or a grind anyway. Then you are just looking at the additional parts cost for the valves, and I don't think I paid more than $75 for the full set of new exhaust valves.

To clarify - This is my opinion, this is what I would do if I was looking at a 383 to build on a limited budget.

I do not know whitepunkonnitro or what experience he has, I wasn't trying to be insulting in any way, maybe he has gobs. I have gathered from lurking this forum that Moper and IQ52 both have a ton of knowledge and experience. Maybe try leeching some of theirs if you haven't bought parts or paid for machining yet. Get all the experienced opinions you can, and from there decide what you think will work the best for what you want your car to do.

For sure talk to the old guys, most of the info I got on what machining to have done and what parts to buy came from my old man who has built probably thirty some engines that worked well and made tons of power, half of them being mopars.

If you don't mind my asking, what kind of budget are you looking at to get your engine finished?