Need suggestions/ideas for engine and engine compartment

Painting the engine bay and those headers would make a tremendous difference. Also paint the tops of your shocks black and the same for that blue box on the driver's side fender well. EDIT: also get some looms for the plug wires or organize them somehow.

I dont think a little more would hurt, but you dont need much. You have alot of factory chrome on the outside of the car like vinyl roof trim, rocker covers, and some on your wheels, so some things like a chrome export brace and monte carlo bar might look good. If it doesnt, paint them black . Overall I dont think you need to buy much at all, just clean up what you have and go from there.

I second the movement for an export brace that will really help make a big difference in your car. You could go chrome with that and have it look good.

Your engine looks reasonably clean and dressed with some chrome already. I think that you need to concentrate on the engine bay.

I would say, first off find some photos of the kind of engine bay you like be it dressed up with all the chrome goodies, race, clean and functional, whatever. Once you've found a look that you like, identify all the parts you and likely to need and price them, figure out a budget for your project and adjust as required to fit the size of your wallet.

If you are going to paint the engine then the only way to do it properly is to pull it. At the same time clean and paint the engine bay. Then rebuild everything, adding new parts and cleaning and painting those existing parts that you plan on using again. Route your leads and wires as cleanly as possible.

Personally for your car I would repaint the engine and the bay, ditch the valve covers, relocate the battery to the trunk, add the monte carlo bay, some headers maybe or paint the existing exhaust. I don't like much chrome, but a little is good.

Check out your local bookstore for inspiration and information to help with the project. There are lots of good books out there.

I'm knee deep in exactly this type of project at the moment. I've pulled the engine and just painted it so keep your posts coming and maybe we can bounce some ideas around.