Yikes! Busted by the engineering police! Remember all that stuff I said about grinders? Well, forget it. I was only kidding. Ha, ha! Actually there is a very valid use for a grinder in your body-working exploits. Once you have welded in a new (non-structural) panel, you have two choices for making the panel look presentable: You can take a body hammer and dolly and knock the weld down below the finished surface of your bodywork, then use a light skim of filler to bring it back flush, or you can use other means (I didn't say grinder...you just substitute an implement for the phrase "other means") to dress the weld down to the bodywork surface. This way, you'll use less filler and have less Bondo in the bodywork. (What the hell am I saying? This is a race car! It's going to have Bondo wedged into every crack and crevice some day.)
I think my mistake was in failing to differentiate between panels with substantial stress loads fed into them and your basic, unstressed panels. For critical stress points such as suspension pickup points or subframe mounting points, I have a foolproof method: 1.) Get the best equipment available; 2.) Get your welder settings exactly right; 3.) Get in a good, comfortable position; and finally, 4.) Get help! As in, "Richard, could you weld this thing up for me?" It's a flawless procedure, and the finished product will be equally flawless.
The "gray areas" of stress, such as floor pans and sills, are still a no-no for use of the g-word. My BMW 2002 has 8 years of weekly slam-bang racing on it, but it's only holding together because I didn't know about the ugly crimes I was committing in the area of bodywork repair. I have entered a 12-step program, Grindermaniacs Anonymous, and I'm making good progress. At present I just use "The Beast" to dress my fingernails.
Now, on to something about which I know some stuff: Motors. Since the Greyhound is in limbo, still awaiting its turn in the cage-fabrication shop, I got busy rounding up a major component, the powerplant. Not just any old mill will do, either. My motor has to be close to 250 hp at the flywheel, it has to be simple, as in no turbochargers or other whiz-bang go goodies, and most important of all, it must be cheap! In case your thought processes are as addled as mine lately, "cheap" and "horsepower" are not words that have ever been associated with one another. Conventional wisdom is, "How fast you can go depends directly on how much money you have to spend." After shopping some "previously owned" M-car motors, this point became crystal clear. I could fry half my budget on a well-used 3.2-liter BMW Motorsport version of their wonderful inline six. In addition, parts are expensive. And most of these motors have lived a hard life, with various and sundry miscreants trying to put the throttle pedal through the floorboard at every opportunity. Scary. So, sadly, until I hit the lottery, no M-motor.