Mondial t intrument panel removal

Well, Bull-In-China-Shop has done it again. I decided to remove my instrument pod to straighten things out that got messed up when I broke my steering wheel hub removing my steering wheel. D'OOOH!

Not having any idea how to proceed I ended up just breaking it at the back to get it off. Now, here is how you are supposed to do it.

There are 2 nuts and 2 bolts. The two nuts are in the front, under the front edge. (when I say "front" I meant the front edge of the pod, the edge that is closest to you in the driver's seat. That is the edge that is further towards the back of the car, but still it is the front of the pod. The studs are attached to the pod, pointing straight down and are in the middle like 1/3 - 1/3 - 1/3. If you have the knee bolsters in place you will probably have to remove them, but perhaps not. The other way that might work, even with the bolster still in place, might be to remove your steering nacelle. To do that you undo the 6 screws on the bottom, undo the nut on the angle adjustment lock, slide the lock bolt out and then the wheel will drop down enough to get the nacelle off. Sorry I can't be more specific as I took my bolsters off a long time ago, and I had the nacelle off when I started on this adventure.

Anyway, locate the two nuts, put an 8mm socket on them and remove them and the washer that is under each one.

That's half of it, and that is the harder half. The two bolts are much easier, but only if you know the secret.

The plastic surrounds for the speedo and tach pop off. Easily once you try. Then undo the 4 small slotted head screws on each one. They will pull out and you can disconnect their harness at the connector. NOW all you have to do is reach in with an 8mm combo wrench and undo the two bolts at the "back" of the pod. (Towards the front of the car.) Remove those two bolts and off she comes easy as pie.

Wish I knew this going in...

 

Once you remove the pod all the lights are accessible. Easy peasy. I am going to redo everything with LEDs. And lots of Deoxit. Done!

I'll try to compile a parts list, but no promises on that.

Oh yeah and I am damn sure going to secure the harness for all the warning lights. That was how I got into this mess. Fiddling around with the harnesses by the steering column I pulled half the warning lights out of their sockets. They are just plugged into the flimsy plastic of the instrument panel and the harness just hangs down. Yike!

Well, the truth is that my pod is not factory as my speedo was replaced at some point, so who knows what other crap was done then, like removing tie downs, but, then again, wait till you see what Ferrari uses for tie downs. It's like strips of celluloid. All that goes too.

 

Cliff, the Mondial t workshop manual is not to put too fine a point on it, A PIECE OF ****. There is one chapter that I would call up to standard and that is the one on the transmission. The rest is a joke. There is nothing in there about how to remove the pod. That's inexcusable.

That said, yes, if I had taken a look at the parts book, (available everywhere for free thanks to Ricambi - Thanks Daniel!), I might have figured out what to do. Well, probably I would have.

Eh, no harm done. I got lucky. A rivet nut gun w/ rivets is $18 at Harbor Freight. SAE rivets but so what. They are the same OD as the metric ones so will "crimp" just fine. Also, the reason that one of mine let go was that it was not set correctly. The defroster vent fiberglass was supposed to be relieved around the hole but Giuseppe had to much "red lunch" that day so the rivet had two different thickness of material to try to crimp on. That won't work, so I finished the job, and now the rivet will be in there solid! Also, when whoever replaced my speedo they used a different trick than I did: undoing the bottom three screws of the instrument panel and breaking of the flange under the top two. That's all fixed now too.

I've cleaned up a bunch of stuff inside that area, so this was well worth it. Will write up all the mods.