[blykins]

I agree with you there.

If you do a stock rebuild, you're already out a set of pistons, rings, bearings, having to have the crank reground if necessary, and the rods resized. For the amount of money that you'll spend, it won't cost much more to just buy a stroker kit.

Just for giggles, I threw a stock 5.0L engine into my Engine Analyzer software.

Horsepower was 230hp @ 4500.
Torque was 302 lb-ft @ 3500.

With a .030" overbore and a 3.4" crankshaft, we get:

Horsepower 241hp @ 4000.
Torque 346 @ 3000.

If you plan to do some modifications later on, this would be a good stepping stone. However, if you never plan to change the heads/cam, then I'd probably just go back with a stock rebuild.

A cam swap would be very easy at this point. If you look at the figures I showed, you can see my point about a larger displacement with the same camshaft. Peak hp rpms go down (at this point it would almost be a dump truck engine peaking at 4000 rpm) and peak torque rpms go down.

If you just went with an upgraded hydraulic roller (still very streetable and would be extremely easy to change when you have the engine apart) you would at least gain a few more horsepower and you would have a nice baseline for a head swap later on.

As far as stroker kits go, the only difference in preparation/assembly is that you will have to clearance the bottoms of the cylinders. This is very easy to see with just a mockup of the crank, rods, and pistons. What I'm saying is that if they can do machine work and assembly, then there isn't anything different about a stroker setup.

If you went with a 331 instead of a 347, then you could probably get away with no cylinder clearancing.