Since I found the water pump dissinegrated, block and head needing a good flush and new freeze plugs install, we also have oil puking from timming cover and oil pan, and completly wasted motor mounts, its been desided that the engine will be coming out for new gaskets and cleaning. My budy would also like to get some more go out of it, more muscle car less grandma car.

The car is a 74 scamp stock 225 with 904.
I already did the HEI conversion.
It will get the tail gears swapped to 3.23s and LSD.
For exhaust it will get 2.25" from the stock exhaust manifold.

As far as a rebuild on the engine goes it has good even compression and in the intrest of keeping the cost down, no full rebuild is wanted. How ever with the head and front cover off I am thinking sending the head in for a hot tank, shaved for a true DCR of 8.5 or 9 to 1 and a 3 angle valve job. Then sending out the cam to be reground nothing to agressive just want peppy up and go with good in town manners. It will be a daily driver keeping the stock 1 bbl carb and needs to pass emmisons. I all ready have a new comp cams timmingset and lifters and gasket kit for him to cut cost.

My question is what flavor of bump stick should we look at OCG is my guess as who to use? Keep compression to 8.5 or push to 9.0? Do we need to look for new valve springs (340 or stock)?

We are trying to keep cost low because we also have tires suspension and brakes in the works. I figure around $100 to get the cam reground and the shop quoted around $175 for the head work.

Any other advice or things to look out for.

I think for your needs you would be happy with your stock cam, an increased dynamic compression ratio, degreeing the cam on reinstallation, and fine-tuning the timing advance curve in the distributor.