I pulled the dash out, and swapped cores in less than two hours. Not a terrible project. Worse than it sounds.
I did it for the first time in around 2 hours as well. It wasn't terribly difficult, but not really easy. If I had a car that had a hacked up firewall similar to the OP, I would use it as an access door, like most of you guys say, but definitely would not molest an uncut firewall to make an access point. The HVAC box idea sounds good though.
Gas is pretty cheap here, 3 bucks at the low, 3.15 at the high. Diesel has always been higher here, as long as I can remember. It's usually 50-60 cents higher than regular unleaded.
I went to a local Firestone to get tires for my old Thunderbird, they told me they had my size in stock and the wait was about an hour; awesome, now I don't have to waste my Saturday waiting for tires.... I sat in the waiting area for about 30 minutes with my wife, and finally we went to go get some lunch. An hour later we come back and my car is still sitting outside, bald tires and all. So another 2 hours in the waiting area, I finally go to ask whats going on... They only had 1 of the 4 tires and even though I was in the waiting area it seemed nobody was going to tell me that they wouldn't be here till Monday morning. So I got the manager, and he made it right, gave me their best tire for the price of their cheapest tire (which was what I was originally getting). He also hooked me up with a front end alignment and waived their 5 dollar balancing fee per tire. Now, I probably won't go back (I haven't in 2 years) but the Manager made it right. Sorry to hear you going through that BS, but they really screwed your wife's ride up, beyond just a simple eff - up..
your cars description says you have dynomax stainless lers, are these different that warlock? i havent heard of that brand
They're made by Flowtech. They are a turbo-style ler with bypasses. Bypasses closed they have such a great sound. Quiet at idle and cruise but sounds mean when you get on it. You can uncap the bypasses to run wide open for track runs or general mayhem. I couldn't be happier with them.
Ok so I got a new sender for my temp and oil, threw the temp sender on and now it works, but its showing a lot higher than I like.... My old cluster/sender was showing me just to the start of the norm mark, just past C. This one is showing about 3/4 the way up once fully warmed up... is the new one just more sensitive, or was my old one bad? Idk.. btw the new sender has a red ring at the top, not a white one like my orignal, or a black one like some of the replacements I've seen.
I also got some TC swaybars today, got the front all painted up. Had to order the main bushings for the front since no one carries 1 5/16 bushings in poly....:(
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't the stock OP gauge kind of a "dummy" gauge? I *think* it just senses for pressure, and as long as it senses some kind of pressure the needle on the gauge will move to around the same spot everytime. I know it's like that on the mn-12's, not sure about the Fox's. The new sensor may read different from the old and another new sensor would read different than both.
I have a similar issue with carpenter bees basically drilling holes in the rafters of my garage.... although not as bad as yours, I feel your pain. Good luck with it.