74 duster heater control removal

[mopar56]

well I am doing the dreaded dash pad replacement, I read all the horror stories and how we should remove the windshield etc, but I am doing it the hard way or easy depending on how you look at it, I have removed the passenger side two nuts and are working on the middle, if I could remove the heater controls I could reach it easier, it looks as if I could just pull the control out through the front but I don't want to pull too hard in fear of breaking it, is there anything else holding it?

 

[mopar56]

ok so it turns out the heater is held in from behind and best accessable with the dash pad off, lol, anyway with a bunch of scratchs on my arm I managed to remove all the bolts/screws except the one screw on the outer left corner and the one above the shifter behind the dash cluster, so at this point seeing as the car came with a replacement dash pad to replace the cracked original there was no need to keep the one we were removing so I simply bent up the dash pad in the middle from right to left until I exposed the stubborn stud that I then cut off and the last screw just pulled out with the pad, then we masked off the rest of the dash we didn't want to paint and carried on with our interior color change from tan to black, I am not going to bolt the new pad on instead I will just slide it into place with the studs as alignment dowels and either a bonding agent or Velcro this will also allow for easier access of components under the dash at a later point, my arm will not endure any more scratches, he he