In order to polish and engine-turn the firewall, I had to remove it from the car. Step one drill all the rivets. I hate to admit this, but I put that sucker together with 1/8" rivets. Believe me, the firewall was in there SOLID, but I'll drill those out to 3/16" when I put it back together. I had a few issues getting the firewall out. First, I had 2 hardlines routed through it. The rear brake lines and the clutch line. Luckily, the rear brake line has a union just below the bottom of the firewall so it could just be unhooked. But the hydraulic clutch line was a single piece between the master cylinder and a short soft line connection at the clutch arm:



OK so there's a union way down next to the 4" tube. The point is it's too big to pull with the firewall and so I cut it out and ordered a new braided softline from Fortes. It's plug and play, a real snap to install. It doesn't route through the firewall, but goes through an existing slot at the top of the footbox. It will occupy a space currently taken by a to-be-rerouted wire loom. Plus with the 90 degree fitting at the clutch the line isn't as exposed as before. It went from this connection:



To now, roughed in, it looks like this:



The second obstacle that stumped me initially was the silicone between the firewall and the frame. I ended up using a screwdriver to pry the two apart, but it took some force. I proceeded carefully though and the firewall came out without any bends. It's too bad FFMetal doesn't make these anymore.

Once I had the firewall out I pulled the rear cubby wall, f-panels and front splash guards, and set up the ol' polishing station. They, plus the upper rad shroud and front nose shroud, all needed a ton of additional work to bring them to full shine:





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