..... i decided to loose two out of the three top heaters as a compromise ......QUOTE]
No way ... now why didn't I think of that LOL:
Oh well, if there is an easy way and a hard way - I usually end up take the hard route ...
OK, so if this doesn't put anyone off I don’t know what will.
So - here we go then, stripped the dash and obviously confronted with a huge structural beam which it right in the way ...
I decided to cut the beam here - because of limited room and not wanting to make too much mess, I hack sawed through this - a very slow process
When removing all the wires there are two earthing points on the rear of the beam - in the pic below you can see these points in the round mirror
You can not get to it from behind the dash by the way
Once the beam was cut, to release it from the passenger floor well there is a bolt and a Nut, as there is a section seam welded, it all has to come out in one.
The next step I don’t have pics for, but I have fabricated a U shaped channel to replace what I have cut out, this will be bolted back into the remaining channel that is still in situ behind the dash - this will also form the base for the Radio to sit on with a small amount of shimming.
.... So there we have it, I just plugged it in to see how it works (and to boost my enthusiasm for hacking my dash)