I was busy finalising my home made scuttle when I realised that the front end of the scuttle was lower than a line strung from the rear end of the scuttle to the rear end of the nose cone

Also the line is not tangential to the nose cone so one won't get a smooth sweep from the nose cone along the bonnet to the scuttle.

How important is keeping everything tangential for the aesthetics?

If important I will have to lift the nose cone about 19mm at the rear and re-make the front of the scuttle. This would mean GRP work on the nose cone

Mechanically it doesn't matter one bit, as long as the bonnet clears the engine. Aesthetically it will probably drive you nuts until you fix it!

David

Prolly it won't matter but check my signature below.

Tell everyone its designed that way after hours of wind tunnel refining