Just another update.
Removed the front seats last night and found $3 all up in change

including some 1c pieces. This car has never been touched which is great. Did a lot of vacuming and still has the hessian insulation under the carpet, which I am leaving there, after all its not a race car of course

The floor is all painted still original from factory and not a spot of rust seen, in pretty much perfect condx. Pretty happy with that. Ive welded up a plate to cover the original shifter hole and put a silastic under it and bolted that down to seal the hole. The main reason I had to pull the carpet back was too cut off the rear center console mounting bracket. Which I did and smoothed and painted and then modified that bracket to be one end of a shifter mounting plate bracket. At the front of this im just using the original front mount for the console. The plate is about 5mm aluminium.

Im thinking that at the front of this plate I may weld another plate angled up towards the heater vents to mount the gauges in.

Above is just a shot of the special vice jaws for doing the braided hose lines.
Might get another shot of the shifter plate in a moment.