67 A/C heater box rebuild and install help

There wasnt much sense titling this thread as removal, cuz when dad bought his 67 cuda, all of the ac/heater stuff was already removed. I was just at dads and forgot to take the camera and take pics of his tables and tables of ac/heater stuff. We do have a service manual and a parts manual, as well as a rebuild gasket kit from Detroit Muscle Technologies. As you can see I have been posting to other peoples ac threads to give them a bump. One thing I noticed on dads pieces is that he has a hole in the bottom of the pass side round hole. I believe this is where the long "J" bolt goes. I plan on doing some reading/research etc, but any tips tricks as to the rebuild/install would help.
One other question...for now, we were going to omit the factory ac stuff as it isnt crucial right now to have it functioning, but we will be firing the 273 up and breaking in his new cam. Obviously the cooling has to be hooked up for the engine running, but is the cooling and ac stuff linked together??

Thanks again all, and going to dads on Tuesday and will take plenty of pics!

4spdragtop and ragtops pop