Don't worry about the rods. With a sane cam choice and even very good head work you'll be fine with prepped stock rods. Read Doc's thread on the twins engine builds and his other posts on connecting rods.
As far as the other stuff...The place to spend money is on the cylinder head. eBay auction 120283899709 has some nice oversize valves, but if you don't have a good local machine shop Doug Dutra (Doc here on the board) or Mike Jeffries can both build you a good cylinder head. The valve springs and retainers are the same as a small block. The cam can be had from the Erson group buy, but I like having original cams reground at Oregon Cam Grinding. Intake manifolds can be had new from Offenhauser or Clifford, but I'm cheap so I get mine used. Clifford and Hoooker both make headers, but you can go darn fast with Dutra Duals and they last longer and fit easier than most headers. Don't go too big on the carb and don't go buy a cam without posting lots about your car so we can guide you.
A good starting point before buying any parts at all is to state a realistic performance goal. Don't just buy parts to have parts, Buy what you need to achieve your goal. You don't buy a drill bit so you can own a drill bit. You buy it to make a particular size hole.
If you want to run 14s with no nitrous or turbo it's going to be more expensive than running 16s or slower. If you want to run a little nitrous you can put an 18 second car into the 16s pretty easily.
So set a goal, tell us lots about your car and use the search function and read, read, read.
Joshua
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