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My car is a '72 convertible, and there are maybe some minor changes between cars....BUT they are about 95% the same to drop the dash you need remove 3 screws into the area on bottom of steering wheel housing, near dash after that drop the kick panels on left and right.....takes removing four door threshold panel bolts to get the flange of the kick panel loose.....then two bolts in door jamb one up top and one down bottom....the one up top is very close to one of 3 going along the panel top edge, mating with the flat dash.......then to look up under the bottom edge of the dash, and find two large 9/16 headed bolts, dropping the wheel/column down a bit to allow the dash to slide out......a bit.......after that the thing is a struggle to remove in that about 50 billion wired, cables and of course the headlight switch needs unplugged......
this is a rough/crude description......I can do it in about15 minits.....but I have owned the car for over 30 years now.....
I recommend REMOVING the steering column. I've removed my dash about a dozen times in 39 years. The last time I finally removed the steering column. It's easy to do and and makes the rest of the job a lot easier too. And you won't break old fiberglass parts that way either.
Originally Posted by Dogmark
Help how do you remove headlight switch from a C3 69 Oh yeah and speedometer to Thanks in advance
Here is the button. Be careful when pulling or bending the dash assembly as the plastic tends to become brittle over the years and it is very easy to crack it. It can be repaired but is not fun.
If you were able to get the switch out there should be enough room to get the speedometer out. Won't be easy, but if you have skinny arms it will help. You might need to remove the ventilation ducts under the dash to get more room to help remove the speedo cable. I had to remove my tach after having the whole dash out and then putting it back together, because they calibrated the tach wrong and I had to take it back to them. Got it to where your dash is and got it apart without too many four letter words. You just have to remember not to force anything as all of that hardware is old and fragile.
Well, maybe not skinny, but perhaps thinner. No Popeye arms. Shorter arms might also make it easier, my arms are very long and sometimes it is difficult to get them to bend to where I need to work.
Things to watch out for. There is a spring clip (Yellow circle) to release the speedometer cable. You have to press it down at you slide the cable out. Sometimes not so easy because of the limited access. You also need to undo the trip odometer cable from the bottom of the dash. (Green circle) There must be a ground connection for the dash lights to work. It could be in either of the red circles. Be careful removing the light sockets as they are probably old and sometimes the metal retainers separate from the plastic holders. I ended up replacing all of my sockets. If you decide to replace the bulbs, don't use the ones from the local auto parts stores. They are made in China and do not stay in the sockets well. I ended up going to my Chevy dealer and bought 10 new bulbs in a box and they are cheaper than the auto store. The gauge is held in with three 1/4 inch bolts, one on each side and one through the hole on the silver plate at the bottom.
Thanks for all the good advice and the GREAT pictures, Now, for the really difficult question How did you get those different colored circles on the parts? And happy birthday
I have a number of programs for editing different images. The one that I still use a lot is MS Paint. If you want to do pixel editing it is still the easiest one to use. I take the photo with my phone or camera and if I am working on the whole image I use an older version of Photoshop. Paid for it once and will keep it forever. Once I have the photo I can edit or crop the image with Paint and then draw circles, make boxes, etc. easily and then save it in various formats, bmp, jpg, tif, depending on what I want to do with the image. For the Forum I keep them as jpg as that is what the Forum likes as images. I do a lot with Paint. I redrew the entire GM '69 wiring diagram in color and have put it out on the Forum for anyone to download. Lot of work, but once I do something I figure I might as well share it.
