Seems, Ive seen a few TBI kits for under a grand recently, might be worth checking into.
Holley, turbo city, places like that. (even cheaper used on ebay, although used, theres odds they are still newer and less used than OE parts)
I like walts idea of using megasquirt though. If you wanted to make your life easier. You could use an HEI distributor, then use the megasquirt to run fuel, if you didnt wanna go to the trouble of trying to map out spark and fuel.
Good luck
