We've actually got a fair few jobs done, but not had much time to update recently.... As it happens, I've just finished another late night rolling on the garage floor lol.
After poking around at the clutch etc, I chucked the engine back roughly in place to measure up for the strut brace and to have a final decision on how much more mazda to chop away (mainly the seams on the exhaust side of the engine bay)




Set up some spacing under the strut brace, so that I could set up some brackets to the mounts on the strut towers, just used the usual cut out cardboard templates to test fit, and then transfer them to steel plate and weld up. Took me a few hours, but it should certainly put back some of the stiffness in the front end, the box section is I think 20x40mm and around 2.5mm thick, and the plates to the strut top mounts are 5mm steel. Perhaps slightly overbuilt, but who cares lol.
Even after all the work so far on this, my welding still sucks, so a blast down all over with a flap disc and then a fingerfull of filler in odd spots just to make it look nice and smooth once its painted.