I don't know about you but cutting off the nose is more trouble than it's worth. The motor mounts are two longeron hardwood sticks that go back into the main fuse area aka it has no stress holding firewall. The other thing is after you see the "cowling" you won't want to hack it up cause it looks REAL nice. The only pain is getting the motor mounted. The one I built had a 40 OS four stroke and getting motor, fueling valve, choke, fuel lines, throttle linkage, and crankcase vent in there took some trial and error but it all looked neat in the end. The motor probably took 3 hours to finish and the whole plane only takes about 6 hours I'd say. The Saito 56 would be WILD and I think the 72 would just be overkill BUT it doesn't weigh much more so if you throttle back it'll probably be just fine. It's just a FUN plane so I wouldn't go to much work changing anything, it's pretty nice just the way it is. Of course that's just my opinion.