So I've taken the plunge now. I've had the dash out before and even pulled out the main steering member (horizontal beam underneath), when I removed the interior HVAC stuff. But that time around, I put the dash (etc) back in place afterwards to keep the airbag system functional, since I'm still on stock seatbelts, etc.
This time around, we're going all in. Airbag stuff and all interior plastic crap being removed permanently (as well as other useless ancillary things like TPMS and Keyfob sensors, etc). There should be no wiring left that isn't strictly necessary for a track car, basically. After I've gutted most of the useless wiring and tidied things up, I'll need to remount the factory 3-gauge cluster on top of the beam somehow for now, and attach a metal plate there in the center for a new custom "dash" to mount various gauges and switches to (including factory start/stop button, and a couple of pushbuttons tied to the cruise control for UpRev map switching). Also, I need to remember to get someone with a Pro license to NATS-disable my ROM before I remove all those keyfob sensors.
Then it's seats/mounts, steering wheel, harnesses. I'll do all that I can myself and then take the car somewhere local to have the actual cage and harness mounts welded in to match the seat arrangement. Hopefully I can squeeze all this in before the next upcoming local Driver's Edge event at the end of September, but I'm willing to skip an event if I have to just to get through this phase of work once and for all.
For now, the ugly ugly pic of the front area with most of the gutting done, but none of the wiring cleanup yet:
