Day 1 (Part 2) - 8/20/2011 - Interior Disassembly

OK onto part 2 of day 1. This is where things get a little complicated.

1. Remove the Dash Pad
In order to remove the dash pad you must first remove the upper speaker grille, upper speaker assembly, defroster vents, mounting nuts, and 8 screws.

First start with the upper speaker grille, it's just 2 screws towards the front, remove them and pull it out. The speaker assembly is a little harder. It has 4 screws front and back and the back 2 are very tight without the window being removed (which is a much later step for me). We were forced to use a screw driver bit and a pair of pliers. Pretty tedious:

Once you get this out disconnect the speaker wires underneath and pull up and out. Underneath the speakers are 2 nuts that hold the dash pad in place. They're pretty hard to reach because you can't see them, having someone on the outside looking down through the glass helps. After this there are 2 nuts on either side of the lower part of the dashpad, you have to go underneath to reach them. Finally there are 8 screws, 4 above the instrument bezel and 4 above the glove box. Bag and tag everything and pull out the dash pad carefully:

2. Remove the instrument bezel:
OK this part sucks, it's tedious as hell. You have to tape and tag every wire. First thing we did was remove the screws holding the bezel in place. There are 6 total, 4 up top and 2 below. Then we put a large piece of masking tape across the the top of the bezel to mark numbers for each of the cables, including placement:

Note: Image shows the bezel removed, we did this BEFORE removing as each wire has to be taken off one at a time and marked with it's matching number:

Just a tip, working in this tight ass uncomfortable space is bad enough WITH seats. With the seats removed you have to improvise. We used outside lawn furniture cushions:

3. Trunk lid and Hood lid:
OK at this point we needed to stretch, so we decided to break away from the plan for a second and just remove the trunk and hood. Not exactly recommended, but it's ok, we're cataloging it proper:

And that's about as far as we got. Next we're tackling the steering wheel and steering column, removing the rest of the dash wires, pulling the windshield wiper motor and glovebox, and removing the lower dash mount. We have to wait for the compressor to come since we still need to be able to push the car forward and back to fit the compressor and electrician in (and kind of need the steering column for that). Thanks for following so far!