That is the pedal plate. Mine was rusted through. Found it by accident. Wouldn’t have been long and the brake or a celerTor would have gone clean through the firewall! It was gut wrenching to find it but made for other opportunities to sort other things.
Wreckers see it a lot. Rightfully so that it was defected. That will be the tip of the iceberg.
You might find a new one from Holden. Otherwise it’s off to the wreckers. I would restore a second hand one. Clean it of any surface rust, treat it. Then some etch primer and a few coats of black cold galv.
You will have to do this yourself. It will be thousands to have someone do it and they’ll break things and do it all really badly.
Whole dash out. Everything. Steering column out. Seats go right back and lay them down flat so you have as much room as possible. Do that before disconnecting the battery negative terminal. Cover the terminal or remove the battery. You don’t want any accidental arcing during this process.
HVAC out. Because you are getting the HVAC out, I would suggest buying a second hand one. Overhaul it. Pull it apart. Clean it. Reseal with better seals (K-Flex from Hammerbarn) New heater core. New AC Evaporator. New Thermal Expansion Valve. All together ready to go in place of the old one saving you a lot of time to do the job.
The intake on the motor comes off to get good access to the bolts holding the dash into the fire wall.
New intake plenum gaskets needed.
You will need remove the wiper cowl so checkout threads about the clips required to reinstall.
The harness plugs for the relay panel behind the left kick panel come off. Then the relay panel itself comes out. Then the harness plugs on the right kick panel come out.
To get the kick panels out
Mark the orientation of the steering column knuckle with a scribe. It needs to be accurate. I did it with a paint pen and was way off in reinstalling.
Set aside a week. Get a mate to help and at best a weekend.
You will need to remove the heater hoses, so buy coolant as well. Check out the thread on bleeding the cooling system in the How To section of the forum.
You will need to get someone to degass the AC and degas it after the job. Plenty of mobile guys that can do that at your house.
Disconnect the brake booster from the brake master cylinder. The booster will come out when you remove the plate from inside the car.
This is going to be the source of water leaks if you’ve noticed wet carpet.
But 3 or 4 plastic crates. You’ll need them for the parts. Mark groups of parts on the crates with masking tape for labels.
Buy lots of ziplocks. Big and small. Get a fresh new texta. Each step, each part get photos before removing and put clips and screws in a well marked bag. Put them in the relative crate.
Download the factory manual. You will absolutely need it.
Good luck.
