Hey Dan, hope all is well. I spoke to Tony, Nunzi's son, about your midplate question. He said it's not needed. Run good motor mounts/tranny mount and bolt steel straps to the front of each head and weld them them to the frame. His 9 sec Tempest does not have a midplate, niether does his SD Catalina. That car is a stick car and runs well into the 10's. He has at least 3 more cars with the same set-up as I described above. I didn't want to post this publicly, he's retired and doesn't want phone calls to the shop.

Take care, Andy.