I tried adding the spacers for the shifter mount and once I trimmed them to a more even height I'm satisfied that this will work. No trace of movement that I can detect when I bang it through the gears.
Then I got to work putting the cable in. They say it should be straight for the first several inches, and I think I achieved that okay.
I would have welded up this hole but I'm not entirely sure this won't have a stick shift someday, so I just used screws and RTV to seal it up.
The TH-350 hardware worked fine at the other end too.
My next step was rigging a switch to disable the 2 step in high gear. For a while I was working on ideas for mounting a micro-switch above the shifter so the gear indicator arrow would hit it. That was the plan until I woke up at 1 AM the other night and thought maybe I could add a little bit of sheet metal to the slot for the back-up light switch (the upper switch). I cut out a piece and tacked it in, and it works fine. The switch is active now in reverse, first and second gears. Ideally it would be active in first gear only, but I should never be hitting the brakes hard at high RPM in the others anyway.
The next step is prepping Johnny Red to go in and get started!