Dashboard

The dashboard turned out to be a bit more difficult than I thought it would be.  Its fairly straightforward.  However, laying on top of a large hole in the floorboard made it pretty uncomfortable.  Also, the moisture that had gotten into the car had corroded some of the thumb nuts that hold on some of the gauges resulting in them being difficult to remove.  By far the biggest issue though was the ignition switch.  If I ever find the person who designed this component, they had better run... and fast!  

The ignition switch is wired directly to the ignition coil on these cars.  In fact, its all one part and they can't be separated.  Because of this, you have to remove the ignition switch from the dash frame before the frame can be removed.  Otherwise, it will still be tethered to the car by the metal encapsulated cable that runs through the firewall to the coil.  To top it off, the coil is too large to fit through the hole in the firewall, so it must be removed from the engine side.  

At first, I tried to drill the tumbler out of the switch so I could remove the bezel that holds it into the dash frame.  No luck.  In the end, I was forced to go to plan B.  I removed the screws holding the switch to the bottom of the dash frame which gave me a little wiggle room.  Then I carefully used a flat blade screwdriver behind the bezel to give me a little space between the bezel and dash fascia.  It sounds like overkill, but I took a dremel with a cutoff wheel and cut through both sides of the switch bezel so that it could be removed thereby allowing me to remove the switch/coil assembly from the car.  Easily one of the stupidest designs I've ever seen on any car.  

After getting everything off, I removed the dash frame.  

Removing the gauges.  Lots of labelling and disconnecting to do during this step.