Hey tosh. thanks for the tips man… greatly appreciate it!
The block will be fully machined by my old man and I, and I’ll be spending a bit of time on the head doing some smoothing and port matching.
I’m not looking to change the direction of this motor, just want to build it solidly, tune it properly and have it for a very long time. Nice conservative numbers like 280-300 to the wheels max… 300 at the crank is fun enough 
There’s a company advertising on KA-T.org called Underground that has some great deals, but I still have to check out the separate prices.