360 My Dash Removal and Accompanying Maintenance

Hi all. A few months back, I found myself with a nail in my tire. And when I went to get them replaced, found that the Michelin Sport 345/30R19s I had on my Novitec NF2s were on national back order. I had been planning to remove my dashboard to service the leather and do a couple other things in the upcoming winter, during Southern California rainy season, but with my car grounded for the foreseeable future, decided to go ahead and tackle it.

I've put together this thread to summarize my whole experience, for anyone else who is considering dashboard removal in the future.

Generally, I followed a video easily findable on YouTube for doing the disassembly, which was super helpful. I recommend starting there.

 

First, the leather.

When I bought the car in early 2020, it had the well-documented issue of the aging shrinking leather pulling away and forming a bubble on the dash, as well as on the corner of the airbag. I dunno if my 2003 had a different leather installation than others, or had already been replaced once, but mine did NOT have a problem of decaying foam underneath the leather.

Contrary to some feedback on other threads, and contrary to what my local upholstery guy said, I ended up being able to fix the issue only with leatherique, not paying $3k+ to reinstall it entirely. I also installed the rizzo aluminum windshield defroster vents to hopefully prevent the same problem from happening all over again.

You can see some details of my before and after on this thread. .

Before: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/proactive-installation-of-metal-dash-vents.659824/#post-148586382
After: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/proactive-installation-of-metal-dash-vents.659824/page-2#post-148613279

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On the underside of the dash panel, I also decided to replace the bits of foam that create seals around the defroster vent openings. They had torn and/or drifted from where they're supposed to be, and I suspected were vulnerable to deterioriating.

The foam I used was 1/4" thick, and I'll talk more about the material below.

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Same for the foam seals around the vents on either side. I used 1/2" foam for this.

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Separately, my PPI had also revealed that my driver side A pillar had a tiny nick in it, pictured below. It never really bothered me, but since I had it out, I had that reupholstered. The grain/color of the leather is not a perfect exact match, but I doubt anyone will notice without pointing it out...and I'm not trying to compete at Concours.

I also had the small bubble on the airbag re-glued by the upholstery shop.

 

Next, the deteriorating AC foam, another well-documented issue.

Dropping the AC was a mofo, but ended up being worth it I think. How to do that is discussed on other threads. This is the one where I asked some questions and shared my own experience: https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/foam-from-the-a-c-deteriorating.582261/

To tilt out the AC, it was necessary to disconnect the pressurized refrigerant line. According to some quick research, the refrigerant used in the 360 is not ozone-depleting. I hope that's true!

For my assembly (38033) and probably the others too, the main thing I'd point out was that the rigid metal evaporator pipes were prone to snagging on the lip of the opening between the cabin and the luggage compartment. For both disassembly and reassembly I recommend getting a second pair of hands to help get the pipes up and over the lip on the luggage compartment side while the other person lifts/pulls/pushes from inside the cabin.

More details in Section I20.06 of the shop manual. Page 1044 in my copy.

 

Once it was tilted down, I scraped out as much of the old foam as I could.

For its replacement, my local foam shop recommended using Ensolite (produced by Armacell), as a somewhat pliable insulating foam but with more heat resistance and a longer expected lifespan than typical open cell stuff.

I used a 3/4" thick piece, and I didn't bother applying any adhesive as it sits on top of the unit and gets squeezed firmly in place.

I've also uploaded a template I created to cut out the new piece of foam. It might not be exactly right, but it should be close. When printed, the dimensions of the image should be 8.5 x 16 at 100dpi. After printing/cutting the image, the outer edge of the foam part itself should measure about 15.25" athwartships.

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During disassembly, one of the plastic steering column pieces broke apart as I was trying to shimmy it out from its housing. Upon closer inspection, it had been sheared previously, and was being held together in a pretty weak manner.

I initially tried to "weld" it back together using a soldering iron, but that turned out pretty weak as well. I then used some JB weld, and on top of that, to actually provide some real strength, I wrapped it in a fiberglass collar (along with epoxy). I held it in place with zip ties as it cured, then snipped and sanded everything afterward. Even though only one of the two parts was actually broken, I added collars to both.

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A previous owner/mechanic had stripped the female threads in the bracket that goes over the battery and that the dead pedal mounts to, so I replaced that too.

And being mildly uncomfortable with how exposed the battery terminals are, I found some generic battery terminal covers on Amazon that were big enough to actually fit. Some of the keywords in the title of what I bought were "Universal Flexible Vinyl Military Spec Battery Terminal Covers"

For reassembling the trim, I ordered a bunch of the cheap and readily available plastic pins (clips?) part 66092400, with additional spares for the next time since they basically break on every disassembly.

And after it was all back together, I took it into my local indy to test the AC with a vacuum and recharge the refrigerant, which set me back about $200.

Through it all, if there was one lesson that was reinforced for me, it was to document, label, and take more photos of everything I'm doing as I'm doing it than I think I need. Putting in that extra effort before and during was invaluable when it came time to put everything back together.

All in all, it was a very successful set of repairs, I learned some things, and had fun in the process!

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Hmm, I don’t have a helpful answer for you. The two lines I was forced to decouple were with the metal hex bolt. One was pressurized…the other I dunno.

There were additional lines connected to the unit, but they were all rubber and adequately flexible so I left them connected. Maybe those are vacuum?

 

While my project was underway, I saw Texas Turbo's post running Michelin PS4 355/30/R19s on the same wheels, so followed his lead and upgraded to those. She's been back on the road for a couple months, with a couple fun drives through the Malibu canyons.

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/grigio-alloy-360-modena.385524/page-2#post-148587423