Like I said, NOT trying to be critical of your work. Only trying to help you get the best bang for your buck and proper use and support of pipe you weld in your car. I have been building cars a long time and am still in full fledge "learning" mode myself.........LOL!!!

Those pics are of the "Reaper" car which is in my shop. It's an old Outlaw 10.5 car, but has some really nice work on it and the way they did the firewall and midplate area was nice and directly applies to what you are doing now. It had a stock front stub, which we hacked off and put struts on it, but we left it the same from firewall back, because I would have had to start at main hoop and come forward with a full redo to really do it like I would have wanted to and time prevented that. Plus it will be fine like it is