And the front spoiler....typically a car back in the day would have it narrower like in the first pic but the more air you can keep out from underneath the car like the last pic the faster you'll go. I widened it out as much as I could without losing the old school look.
Dale Sr's car in the last pic is a 1999 Monte Carlo Winston Cup car exactly what my car originally would have looked like in its racing days other than paint....if it had a front end on it. haha
Front spoilers are easy to make and easy to mount. I may have two or three different ones.

looking great, good to see it progressing. the only thing that worries me is the belt drive. if you are going to run on the street a lot you may want to look at getting a cover for it to keep the dirt out of it. they are not a problem on boats where it is clean or race cars where they are changed out often but on street cars the dirt can play hell on the belt. I like that you are keeping things like the front spoiler, etc true to the vintage of the body. we have a 55 chevy at the shop that we are thinking of making into something similar as it is pretty rotted. when do you think you will have it on the road?

if you are going to run it on a track you may want to look at doing a splitter, not much good for the street though

I know. I called Jesel about a cover and the guy who answered the phone said they didnt make one for the Dart Iron Eagle block with the raised cam galley. He said they make a cover for the regular sbc and when I asked him why they didnt make one for the Dart block he said "I dont know" and basically hung up the phone, a real professional!!

Im going to call back and try again but for this year I will be lucky if I get it running under its own power and a couple of shakedown runs in so for this year Im not overly concerned but I may end up changing to a chain ultimately.

You're right a splitter would almost for sure work the best but as I stated in the front spoiler dept nothing is carved in stone so I may end up doing a splitter if I could envision one that would look "kind of" period correct.

I may try a "cheater" version of what I have now. A full width/deeper version of what I have now and paint the areas that are larger than the one I have now black so at least when Im driving by at speed it "looks" like this current one...haha

well that wasnt very nice of them! the belts survive road races with dust and dirt flying so it probably wont be the end of the world but it does shorten the life of the belt and pulleys which sucks. you are way ahead of my mustang fastback project, mine is still just a shell and I have had no time to do anything on it the last six months so you should feel pretty good about your progress.

We got more!

Did body work for two straight weeks....Im happy with it. Its not the greatest but its a Mercedes by stock car standards

Lightened the doors. Maybe only took a pound off per door but I wanted to do it those things are really heavy

Got my channel and new upper weatherstrip in. Was concerned because after shaving the drip rails the roof edge isnt stock anymore but the glass seals perfect and the door closes just like a stock Chevelle. No issues thumbs up!

This will be the quarter window treatment.(searched high and low for that solution) so the front windows will still operate and seal properly. Made from Lexan, they will not roll down on either side. I havnt decided yet but the drivers side will have a Naca duct like in the pic for the rearend cooler for sure and I might double up the drivers side and add one on the pass side to route cool air to the rear brakes. Ditching the glass window and crank mechanism saves 16lbs per side! I weighed it.