Speedway seems to offer the best price on the Scat stroker crank. KB has a specific piston for this combo. KB PN 364. Double check on KB website. KB is a good street mostly, drag ocassionally piston. They run with unusually tight clearances and will give you a better ring seal. If you plan on race mostly, street ocassionally, use the forged piston. Rods? If you have a set of prepped rods already (magged, sides ground, shot peened, ARP bolts, centers set) re use them. Again street use mostly here. If you have standard, out of a stock motor rods, what it will cost you to do them right will almost pay for a set of new forgings already setup. Your block will have to be notched slightly where the rod nuts come near the block. For Cobra motors, an SFI balancer, billet flywheel, and somebody's (Canton, Milodon, Moroso, etc.) baffled
oil pan are almost not optional.
Your short block with parts, balancing and all will come in at around $1700 - $2000. The TFS heads will set you back $1100 - $1200. Hydraulic roller retrofit cam, lifters, spider, pushrods, springs, timing chain set about $750. CompCams pro-Magnum steel (steel, not aluminum for a street motor) roller rocker arms about another $300. Use the springs that come with the cam, not the ones supplied with the heads. I poly coated the springs (Airborne Coatings, same place the headers went, different coating) to help keep 'em cool and get a little more life out of them. Make sure either you, or your machine shop gets the pushrod length right. Most cam kits don't have the correct length pushrods, and you'll have to exchange them.
If you want a roller motor, $3000 won't cut it. The difference between a 351 and a 393 is the price of the crank or about $500.
A note here though. A bare set of heads appears on my bench, and my die grinder warms up all by itself. There is always something that needs cleaning up. I took the TFS's out of the box and bolted them on the motor untouched. There wasn't a thing I could have done to improve on them.
If I were bucks down, and had to keep this under $3k, I'd do the stroker. Clearance the block for the spider that has to go in the lifter valley for rollers. Use a hydraulic cam and somebody's iron heads for now. Easy (er) upgrade later. Can be done with motor in car. Notch pistons for both standard and TFS heads.
Distributor gear. Roller cam, steel gear. Non-roller cam, iron gear. Get it wrong and you chew up your cam gear, distributor gear, or both. No bronze gears on street motors.