If you want to pursue this, It is highly advised to bump up your compression first, and co-ordinate with the cam's Intake Closing Angle with your available gasoline's octane rating, your intended usage, and the available TM (Torque Multiplication), and most especially, with your budget. It's very easy with a 318 and a small budget to quickly get in over your head.
For instance
If you intend or are constrained by budget, to keep the factory low-stall TC and hiway gears, Then your factory engine cannot take much of a cam, before it rapidly becomes a turd from idle to maybe 3000 rpm. With 2.76 gears, this is apt to be well over 30 mph. This is the definition of turd; Slow to 30 mph..With 2.45s you are in deep doggy doo-doo.
Because you state the small budget requires you to keep the 2bbl, You are between a rock and a hard place; and because your knowledge base is still at newbe level ( this is not a poke btw), it would be strongly advise to not play with camshafting..... until your further up the learning curve.
BUT, this is very important, until that time, it would still be adviseable to up the compression today, in preparation for that future opportunity.
To that end, let your builder get the flat-top pistons up as high as he can towards zero deck, and call it done. Depending on the size of your chambers, this could net you a compression ratio between 9.0 and 10.0. From the final compression ratio, in that range, you will be able to find a cam to satisfy your 2bbl hiway locomotive.
Here's the caveat, and the key; do not order a cam until you know exactly where the compression ratio will come in at. Then shoot for an altitude corrected Dynamic compression ratio a little lower than 8.0,with a cylinder pressure around or a tad under 160, and you will be a happy camper.
Secret; the higher your Static compression ratio is, the larger your camshaft can be...... but the larger the camshaft is, the later the power comes in, so the sooner you need a hi-stall and possibly gears. This is why, on a tight budget, you can quickly get into a turd combo.
When money is not a concern, you can build a 318-powered A-body, to blow a factory 340-powered one, away.
The high-compression 2-bbl 318, is the building block.
Unfortunately, you cannot go much higher in compression with the factory cam, before you run into detonation, which must be avoided at all costs. This puts you into the ugly place of having to run top-grade gas and possible reduced timing, and then with the lower timing,the little 318 just runs out of performance,while costing big money to continue operating, and then you have a big disappointment.
You are at the crossroads of doing both a compression bump and a camswap together, a very enviable place for a lot of guys. Take advantage of it; do not let that engine come home at 8/1 Scr.
