73 Duster 318

I'm in the same boat, coming from imports and race bikes to American muscle for the first time. My 74 Swinger has a strong running 318 in it and I have a 360 that needs a total rebuild, it's going to be a strip car so the 318 isnt really an option but I plan on starting with it anyway because I can use the intake up as well as the headers I plan to use on the 360 on the 318. Im leaving it all stock other than that except for nos. I will destroy the 318 for sure but it's just to get started, go out and meet people at the track and have some fun in street legals. If I was going to keep it as a daily driver I would just leave it as is, it's a light car and a light engine, without doing anything too major you could get it to about 230hp and it would haul serious ***, I think for your budget you may just want to scale down your hp expectations a little and look at your weight , a bumper swap will give you serious gains, sheds about 100lbs. anyway I'm just figuring it out myself and this is pretty much other peoples two cents that I have regurgitated.