Fitting new GPS part 2

After enjoying the car over the past two evenings, I started in earnest with the car’s preparations for this year’s 10 Countries Run today. And I started with a job that I have postponed for a pretty long time, fitting the loading and mounting dock for the “new” GPS device. Why? Because I hate removing the dashboard of these cars. Not that it is a difficult job, but rather time consuming. And there will always be a few things that will throw up a fight. Mostly because they are difficult to get to. So I came prepared and had scheduled to only remove the dashboard from the car today, and start fitting the GPS dock this weekend.

The first part to throw up a fight was the gear lever surround. As usual that refused to cooperate. But it needs to come out before you can access the centre console. Quickest and easiest way to remove the surround is disconnecting the handbrake cable from the back axle so the hand brake lever can be pulled up higher, giving enough clearance for the surround to be removed.

With the surround out of the way I removed all fasteners from the centre console. But left it in place because there are a lot of electrical connections hiding behind, including the radio. Of which I am still searching for the keys to remove it! Instead I decided to remove the steering wheel and the column switches in preparation for the dashboards removal. And after an hour and a half all fasteners were removed and connectors disconnected. Of course a lot of pictures were taken of how wires were connected, and all screws and bolts were stored per part or area of the dashboard.

After which it was finally time to remove the dashboard from the car. Leaving lots of space around the heater and a boot full of parts.

As I was by now well ahead of schedule I decided to have a go at mounting the GPS’ docking station. I had mentally prepared that this would be difficult and it was. But as I knew what could go wrong that wasn’t much of a surprise. And by the end of the afternoon the docking station was fitted to the dashboard. Sadly the mobile phone I was using as notebook (Samsung S8 Edge) decided to randomly add various effects to the pictures, which I didn’t ask for. So I owe you these images!