'87 GMC brainstorming

[Marik Bathory]

So my '87 4.3 caballero came home and was relegated to guarding the garage do to the old familiar story of everything went pear shaped and I've run out of money. I've suddenly become a single income family. This has the advantage of giving me plenty of time to plan my steps carefully. I can still have a nice car, I'm just going to have to use my brain instead of my credit card.
The plan was to build the car like an old Kelly American Challenge car and race it at local road courses. (I'm in easy driving distance of Daytona, OMC, PBIR, and Sebring) With a high-reving 302, paddle shifted corvette transmission G-machine suspension, and brakes that will make your eyes fall out. A distant pipe dream now.
First on the hew plan is a Carb converted L31, which should net me 255hp and 350ft/lbs. plenty to get me going and a good base for future mods. I'm hoping at the same time to upgrade to a TH700R4 transmission.
That's about as far as my plans have gotten n under the new budget. I don't have any experience with G-bodies or RWD racing at all (the only RWD race cars i've owned in the past were Fieros and they're FWD setups) I intend to do all installation works myself, i'm capable of very minor fabrication, and want to use as many Junkyard upgrades as possible. function beats form every time, and cheap is always preferred.
Suggestions? What kind of things should i be looking for at the junkyards?

 

[onyxxtreme]

with fab skills, you can pretty much make the best of whatever you can scrounge up at the yards, work good.
Jeff Schwarze started off (if I remember correctly) taking a typical GM car, and using mostly better parts from all the different GM platforms, and making some serious performers. He had a HUGE 70's Coupe Deville, that he made to do some serious carving, several years ago.

 

[Tank]

The best thing to do is start off with plenty of research, from what I remember in reading thru several hundreds of threads, there are plenty of factory upgraded components out there. I do believe the Grand Prixs had some really neat suspension bracing pieces and such along with upgraded sway bars from camaros and searching for heavy duty rear ends and you'll be good to go.