I did a search and most of the stuff that I found on heads and cams were for guys that want to race. Currently I am just playing around with the car. I have my 350 in it right now and just got everything ironed out to where I'm confident that it is right.
My next project is going to be the valve train. My current setuo includes 350 short block with unknown miles but it runs tight and doesn't leak oil. 193 heads and stock cam. I have a set of 081 heads off of my 305 that I could port and polish. I'm running the stock qjet which is working great and I have a couple of back-ups if it decides to kick the bucket. hedman torquestep headers and y-pipe, no cat, 2.5 inch exhaust all the way back to a 1 into 2 muffler. I have a summit aluminum intake as well. fresh rebuilt 700r4 driving the junk stock 2.73 gears.
I want to build this engine on an extremely tight budget. I'm looking for 300-400 HP at the flywheel. I was thinking either reconditioning the 081 heads with an at home port and polish, or dropping about $300 on rebuilt 083's. The cam would probably be a Comp xe268. Do you guys have any ideas that I should look into to build more HP with my money? Any suggestions? I only want to do this once so I will research for a few months before making a final decision.

wut i would do is spend 650 bucks on some brand new 2.02 heads from summit, cam, roller rockers, intake, and carb......for the heads cam and rockers u will spend bout 800 bucks and it will prolly put u around 350 to 400 hp...throw some flat top pistons n the mix and ur lookin bout 425 or so

you'll need to put work into those heads to handle the cam's lift i believe. Get the right springs for that cam as well. Any decent 1.25" spring should handle a flat tappet. do a port/polish and run that cam it should be over 300hp but under 400. right in your range

should run ok, depending on how much you port those heads. More the better. give them a good clean up and they should work well. i'd like 1.94" valve tho i think 081's are 1.8x or something. not the end of the world but your giving up some flow over the 083 style L98 irons.

The only concern that I have with the 081's is not being able to run 87 octane gas anymore. I have a stock 350 from a full size chevy van, so I assume that I have 7 cc dish pistons and .025 deck clearance. With the 58cc combustion chamber on the 081 heads and a .041 thick head gasket, I will have 10.1:1 compression. This is too much for regular gas right? Plus getting new valve seats cut costs me more money.

Does anyone know where to go to find used heads that I can rebuild myself? What cars came with the 083 heads? Are they just on corvettes? I might go junk yard hunting. Are there better places to get heads though?

083's are on 350 L98's on fbodys. 10.1 to 1 is alittle high but you may beable to get by with conservative tune and 93 octane