Let me know what you end up doing re the latches as I am always interested in sources of bits.
I was at Peter Ransoms factory in mid January and had a good look over your car. He had done an excellent job of building it and like you I have always found Peter to be fantastic in answering questions and coming back with suggestions and as I race my car as much as I can Peters previous racing experience has helped me a lot.
For your infomation my car is as follows,
- 302 block, hot tanked,machined decks,ARP rods,balanced,10.2 compression,Molly rings, Clevite bearings,Felpro gaskets, Edelbrock 6025 heads,hardened push rods,Crane rollers rockers,special camshaft,Romac balancer, ARP pump drive, Melling oil pump,Mallory distributor and coil pack, 10mm extra low resistance leads,Edelbrock Performer RPM manifold, Edelbrock valve covers, Edelbrock oval air cleaner but with a Unifilter washable foam air filter, Holley 600, 80amp alternator, TRW Hi Flow water pump, air conditioning, Serpentine belt, ceramic coated crossover exhausts that feed into two ceramic coated mufflers with inline cats,
16 litre donor radiator with single fan,16" replica machined billet Halibrand wineglass wheels with 225 and 255 tyres.
It was built to handle 70hp per cylinder but is only at about 40hp at present as my focus is on the handling.
I have a standard starter motor so have not had your problems.
And yes it does go quite well both in a straight line and around the twisty bits.
My car is red in colour, no stripes,but with black paintouts around lights, covers, windows etc. but other than that the car is pretty much the same as yours.
If I can help with anything please let me know and I look forward to hearing how your car is going............Stephen