[Bobboloo]

Welcome to the sickness!

You have to go for the throat to tackle the beast. This means the chassis so spray all the motor parts with WD40 and put them away.

Use a carpet cutter to cut the window seals and remove the front and rear glass if you haven't already.

Don't be afraid of the dash and harness. It's not that big of deal but it'll be in the way if you try and work around it. You have several choices for dealing with it.

1. Unhook everything in the trunk and bag the harness and stow it in the smugglers box.
2. Unhook everything and pull the front harness into the passenger compartment.
3. Complete removal of the harness front and rear.

What you do will depend on the condition of the chassis interior. i.e. Is there any rust in the center tunnel? If there is then you'll need to remove the harness completely. Hopefully this isn't the case but it's doable if you use the right procedure. I've done it and it's not that bad. I can offer some tips for you if it comes to that. Hopefully your center tunnel is fine in which case you can just bag the harness at either end of the tunnel.

Get that MIG welder asap. I put off buying one thinking it would take too long learning how to weld and when I finally bought one I could have kicked myself for waiting so long to buy it. It is an indispensable tool for the job ahead of you and isn't that hard to tackle. Your welds may not be that pretty at first but the angle grinder is your friend.

To me the most time consuming part of restoration for the novice is decision making. The sooner you can commit to the task at hand the sooner it gets done so don't be afraid to unhook that harness from the dash gauges. You can take pictures of the back of the gauges like Milt has suggested. The harness is color coded and can be referenced with the readily available schematics.

Tools needed in the near future:

1. MIG welder gas or no gas. (flux core can get the job done)
2. Welding helmet
3. Leather gloves
4. Mapp gas torch (burn away paint before welding)
5. Wood handle wire brush (brush weld area)
6. Respirator
7. Angle grinder with several cut-off discs, grinding wheel, heavy duty wire brushes and paint stripping abrasive wheels.

Have fun and good luck!