Hopefully I can try to answer some of your questions land Locked.
When I got hooked on the project I probably did what a lot of people do I bought 'The Book', downloaded some of McSorelys plans and then discovered Chris's book so I ordered one, also picked up a few other books and tried to decide what would be the right for me.
In the end I liked what Chris had done so my decision was made to build a duplicate of his.
I soon discovered that the donor car was scarce here, they were sold for a short period of time as a performance car with turbos and such, but were very limited, plus what was available was now becoming a collectors item, so there was not much chance of coming across one cheap.
I at first thought of using a Miata, but they are not cheap either.
In the end I modified what I needed to make Chris's frame work for me and that was how I got to where I am now.
I wanted to keep cost down and also have no problem with parts if needed, especially if I broke down somewhere in a small town.
The frame from behind the seats forward is true to Chris's car, I modified my pickup points and I put in some extra bracing.
The spindles are Mustang II as they are very common here.
I have upgraded to 11 inch Ford Granada rotors, but used the GM metric Calipers as they are real cheap and easy to find anywhere.
The ball joints are threaded Moog 722, also common.
The lower wishbones are my own with the same moog 722 joint and Triumph bushings.
The steering rack is a shortened Mustang II rack, cut down by 3 inches, I have used poly mounted bushings.
The rear axle is from a Ford Explorer, I used it because I found one cheap, it is a 5 link setup.
The trailing arms are rose joints at one end and triumph bushings at another, so I still have some adjustment.
I got a whole bag of the Triumph bushings off ebay cheap.
I am using Gaz shocks from Dampertech, price was real good until the canadian govt got involved, but in the end I still saved a few dollars from what I would have paid here.
I got a set of wilwood pedals off EBay for a good price so that is the main reason I am using those.
In fact a great deal of my car is from EBay, maybe I should call an EBay special, even the steering wheel came from EBay South America.
The engine is a GM 3.4, I got that through my brother who works for GM, they had one at his dealership and they wanted to get rid of it and I guess I had buyer written on my face as he made me a good deal, so that came about by chance as I originally hadn't considered a V6, I was going to go with a 4 cylinder initially.
So at this point I still use Chris's book as a guide and where possible build by it, where I cant I just go out on my own.
Hopefully I have answered a few of your questions without making a long read.
Al