yep, there you go.
give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. teach him to fish and he can eat for a lifetime.
enough preaching. it's all about what you want. if you want an sohc killer, some pistons, a good cam, high end header and exhaust will get you there. it's more work on internals and you are still doing a swap, or you could get a b16 with i/h/e and be at the same point. plus you can order an lsd when you get the b16. which will be important for racing.
and don't listen to the guys about tuning obd0, it's an internet myth that you can't tune it. there are a lot of programs out there that make it possible.