Exactly! Everyone has their versions of what would work, what's acceptable, etc etc. It seems that too many people think that since someone is doing something outside the box and not what
they would do - like installing a Mustang II
suspension in an SN95 chassis, building a Mustang II, even the Ford vs Chevy thing - it's worthless and not worth doing. It's an opinion, it may or may not be popular, but it's still an opinion. If everyone did the same things those things would start to get boring. Given that, I'm kinda on the fence about finishing the work that was started or just getting a different car and basically starting over as I said earlier. But I'm not going to beat it over anyone's head, that's just what I would contemplate and possibly do. But I'm all for this being completed too. I mean there's nothing wrong with using a II front end, they're tried and true a few million times over. Hell, I can't badmouth them, look at the cars I own!
But that's the epitome of "hot rodding" or car building - being ingenuitive and doing something to your car to truly make it yours. And in that vein I'll offer advice when I think I can regardless of which direction the car would go, and I'll try to be respectful regardless of what I would or wouldn't do if I was in that situation. It costs nothing to be respectful but it can cost you your reputation when you're not, something I think most people don't think about with the semi-anonymous nature of the internet. To be honest, if someone were to say some of the things that I see written in different places on the internet to someone's face, can you imagine the brawls that would break out??
Ok, off the soap box and back to the subject at hand: as for the shock mounting brackets, they're probably plenty strong. The tensile and shear strength of the steel between the hole and the top is most likely more than the force that will ever be applied to them. If you want to over-engineer them, you could probably make the steel thicker by welding another plate on the inside of that bracket and re-drill the hole, thereby increasing those strengths. If you're worried about them flexing, you could also weld a gusset or 2 to them, but I think they'll most likely be fine even with the added weight of a modern car vs a street rod. Because there really isn't THAT much added weight in comparison, especially if you're going to go with a small block Ford.