1966 with gear vendor

Good question. Planning on reusing cut out piece. Cut smaller and weld in place.

If you can, you might consider welding the result to the floor pan, as opposed to the few factory spotwelds involved, to stiffen the piece because you lost a lot of strength there and that part of the frame (the whole piece) is pretty critical. If you do that and have room above, you could make a piece to go above it over the floor pan and weld it in place too.