I've thought of the TurboDiesel, too. In fact, I thought about it a lot. Gas is about $5 here BTW :-) I don't know whether you've heard of LPG-gas? It's a mixture of butane and propane and you can get it easily here in Germany. There are about a million (that's the real number at the moment) cars in Germany running on it and it's very easy to convert from a petrol to gas. I say gas here because it's real gas, not a fluid :-) Costs about 2000 bucks to install, fits every petrol engine and halves your fuel costs. It has about 105 octane, and doesn't create any soot, or wash oil off your walls when cold, so the engine lives longer. But you can only do that with petrol, not with diesel engines. That's the overall plan. And I like a V8. I like the sound, the feel, the torque it has... And I like fiddling around with things :-) That's what it's all about. Seeing as I'm a student and build cars as a hobby only (no race or anything) I'm not much into the power building business. BTW, I just read your long thread on 383 building, that looks like a good job well done! I would like to hear what mileage you get from that, if you're ever going to work it out, I guess mileage isn't really a concern with the fuel price being so low :-)
And I'll have to find a nice block-machining shop, too.
I know things are cheaper over your side of the lake, I often buy my trans-parts from transmissionpartsusa. Seem to be quite cheap (about half the price I would pay here and that's including the postage and tax) Sometime i would like to build a really good, stock engine (everything balanced, everything fits ...), the one I have now runs OK, but it was rebuilt in Germany by a shop that didn't even manage to get the oilpan gasket in straight (there was about a ton of RTV all round the engine and it still leaked), but that was before I bought it and changed all the gaskets myself. Ah well, I've been blathering a lot, I notice, Hope you don't mind :-) I wish you the best of luck for your 383, and will get on planning my project...
CU,
Madmax