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Suspension
If you're on a budget, follow the guide Dave Voss wrote. In a nutshell, he suggests rather than tampering with the spring rates by cutting coils, add a second front swaybar and double up the rear lower control arms. The second swaybar will help reduce the inside rear wheelspin when exiting a corner and the lower control arms act like a rear swaybar plus reducing tail-wag when going over railroad tracks.
While
Dave's guide is good for the street, there are some problems with this
approach for a competition car. He wisely recommends only lowering
the car to where the front lower arms are parallel to the ground.
However, the spring rates one should use for competition should be as high
as you can possibly use with the shocks you choose. The factory shocks
will handle up to 200 pounds per inch spring rates. Most good competition
cars, however, are running spring rates in excess of 400 pounds per inch...
to do so, you'll need to adapt competition shocks/struts from another car.
Note that front struts for the pre-1979
131 are unavailable. Use the later front struts, but you'll need the upper
strut mounts. The rear shocks are less problematic. If they should not
be available, make a spacer and use an appropriate nut (fine thread vs.
coarse thread).