I mentioned it before, but I did read the Vortec swap thread a bit. That's why I said I moved it to the bottom of my list of considerations, as the modifications to the intake and castings seemed a little too intimidating. I'd prefer bolt-on solutions over having to cut and drill anything if I can avoid it.
This is going to be controversial, but I'm looking into possibly upgrading to an Edelbrock 3704 Performer TBI intake and retaining the TBI heads with it. I've seen mention that the factory intakes have a bad tendency to warp, and since I'll have it off one way or another, it might be a good time to consider upgrading it instead of the heads. I've seen a split between people who praise the Edelbrock intake, as well as plenty of others who say it made no difference for them (or worse). I stumbled across the fact that Edelbrock will provide a custom chip for it for free, and I wonder how many people are disappointed because they're not running the intended tuning differences that would unlock it's supposed potential. It doesn't seem to be well-advertised that they offer the free chip, as you have to contact Edelbrock with your proof of purchase to get one instead of it being included in the box.
While experienced tuners hate off-the-shelf chips, I live in an area where most people are still convinced a 1988 ECM is new-fangled witchcraft because it's not a half-varnished carburetor. A local tuner shop probably isn't an option unless I trailer the whole thing out of town. An interesting thing I've learned about early TBI is that most people seem split evenly between hating it because it's too modern, or hating it because it's not modern enough for OBD2. I don't know anything about engine tuning yet, but as someone stated earlier in the thread, people who do it for these older systems are getting harder to find. I do know electronics and computing fairly well though, so if the Edelbrock chip doesn't run well I could study to learn tuning and try flashing an upgraded flash memory chip myself. I know we have a thread here on it, and I think I remember the Harris site having a lot of DIY information available even though he's retired from selling chips himself. I have a spare ECM on a shelf and could easily modify it with a socket for easy swaps per another thread I found on here. It's just a matter of overcoming the learning curve, IF the Edelbrock chip would even be a problem for just the upgraded intake it's designed to account for.