Thursday, March 6, 2014

Prepping the Interior for the Installation of the 2 TV Dash Part 2

I figured out a way to get the gage cluster out of the dash with a minimal amount of fuss. My original suspicion of needing to give the speedo cable some additional slack from the other side of the firewall turned out to be the best method. I had to do a little digging so to speak in the engine compartment in order to gain better access to the other end of the cable that went into the cruise control. I ended up removing the air cleaner intake snorkel in order to gain access to where the other end of the speedo cable screw on connector.

Once the air intake snorkel was removed getting to the end of the speedo cable was much easier, all I needed to do then was simply unscrew the connector to the cruise control. 









You can see the disconnected speedo cable in this next pictures down in between those other wires and cables (Center of image)

Once disconnected pushing the cable through the firewall was easy and gave me plenty of additional slack in order to gain access to the release clip on the back of the gage cluster.





Once the speedo cable was slackened I noticed yet another obstacle. 
"Was this nightmare going to ever end?!?" 
I thought. As it turns out the steering wheel column was now in the way of me getting the gage cluster out. 
"Who's the sick twistoid who designed this nightmare!?!"
I wondered. So I got down under the steering wheel column and noticed the bracket holding up the column. On each side there are two large nuts that I proceeded to loosen, this allowed the steering wheel column to drop down enough for me to wiggle free the gage cluster and gain access to the speedo cable's release clip.
Being that this is a classic car, all of the components are a good 30 some odd years old so care had to be taken while disengaging the gage cluster from the dash. It's in surprisingly great shape I could see, much like the condition of the rest of my '82 Trans Am Firebird. On the back you can clearly see the printed circuit and contacts, it's basically just a transparent piece of plastic with copper inlaid printed contacts. In great shape so I was very pleased about that.



Now that we have the gage cluster out and a lot of the other dash components that will not be needed for the installation of the Knight Rider 2 TV Dash we are a step closer. I'll most likely spend a lot of time doing some cleaning up or and repainting of some parts I noticed could use some TLC while I was in and around poking about trying to figure out how to get that blasted gage cluster out of there.

I also need to get a digital speedo sensor as this one in the 82 Trans Am is Analog.

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