318 Advice

A D52 axle translates to a 2.94:1 8¼ axle. Not too shabby considering that most cars of that vintage had 2.76 or 2.45:1 rears for better fuel mileage.

Your combination is very much like my own. I'm running a 625 cfm AFB and an old Crane Fireball cam. If you have to pull the heads, have a good three-angle valve job done on them and a little port clean up work. If you don't have problems, leave 'em alone for now.

For a little better dig the recommendations for a hotter cam are well taken. If you want to keep things civil, look for a 340 re-pro cam. That would go well with a 3.55:1 set of rear gears. (This will aid your quest for spin, too.)

You can aid looks and performance with a wheel and tire swap. There are plenty of threads here on the subject. A lot has to do with the look that you're after for your car. Since you said you wanted to be able to spin the tires occasionally, let me recommend Jetzon tires. Some would say they are POSs but they spin and slide on asphalt better than anything I've seen. I personally would not consider them if I were buying tires for my cars.