360 Aftermarket Heads on 318

Seems to me that you have a good idea of what you want to do. Your path, IMO, is a bit more lit up now and your head is in the right place. I think you just needed to bounce this off the forum members.
Yea even with just this question I've learned more. it's such a good source of information. And once you get to a certain level of depth, some questions just cannot be answered by looking something up, which is why I decided to make an account here for my super specific questions lol.
But I'm still learning little by little, just regurgitating stuff that I've heard or read and as I learn my ideas/plans change. I still remember about 6 months ago I was confused with "if you set your initial timing, wouldn't adjusting total timing change that?" and now knowing mechanical advancement can be changed with various methods I understand that and much more.