I managed to complete one monster pita portion last night. Top picture is of the original 65 opening for the steering column at the base of the firewall. Note the butchered area above the original clutch rod opening. The opening is large from the factory for the steering column to allow the cable shift column to fit thru the firewall.
I replaced everything with a section of firewall from the 63 330. This repairs the damage and allows me to use the base plate and tube from the 63 manual column. Although that column was a 3 on the tree column I will remove all the extra hardware so its just a floor shift manual column in the end.
Clutch rod hole is all fixed along with an area of rust that showed up once I removed the bracing for the inner fender well. One more little hurdle cleared... Only a thousand more to go...