You're choice in gears is pretty tall. See if you can get something in a 3.2x or 2.9x
Most people prefer the 3.23 gears. At normal highway driving you'll be closer to torque peak, which will help your economy, and the car will be much more fun around town.
3.55's are a tad too far for comfortable freeway cruising on an automatic.
I run 3.50's just fine, but the noise levels are higher. They are much more fun around town though.
Are you going to stick with the 1bbl carburetor? If so, don't get too carried away with the cam choice.
Search on the 2-1/4" head pipe. Performance and economy both increase with this modification. The stock head pipe is 1-7/8" which is very restrictive.
What's your budget? $1000 isn't going to go very far for the build. Double that to get some flow work on the head.
Minimum Rings bearings and gaskets, no machine work other than perhaps taking a bit off the head and doing a valve job should be attainable with careful shopping and putting the engine together yourself for your 1k figure.
My build came in over $4K. Engine only. It's fairly close to the 1hp/cube figure. I'd say a tad less by the G-tech and strip data I've collected, based on car weight.
1HP per cube builds are going to take some rather special parts, and will generally cost much more than your target budget. It can definitely be done for less than my build, but your budget is too thin for that sort of thing.
CJ
