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It is technically possible to do some wiring work behind the dash while still seated in the driver's seat, but it takes a steady hand, conviction, and an iron will. Well, OK, maybe a copper will.
If you scope things out first with a well-placed mirror (and some good lighting underneath), sometimes you can feel around and pull a lead or a bulb socket from the rear of a gauge without actually having to be looking at it while you do. That's some of the time and some of the wires, if you are lucky and have led a clean, relatively virtuous life.
I did the majority of my grappling with gauge wiring back in the early days, when my Speedster and headlight switch were still new. I gradually discovered that the main reason for that first switch going up in smoke was that six five-watt bulbs had been used for gauge lighting (instead of one- or two-watt bulbs). This was way more than the dimmer coil in the switch could handle, so much smoke and darkness ensued.
After pulling one bulb and reading its rating, I just put it back and built a little dimming circuit out of ceramic load resistors and bypassed the dimming circuit on the (replacement) headlight switch altogether. I thought that easier than trying to reach and replace six separate bulbs, to say nothing of finding six bulbs of the proper wattage in the correct size.
Admittedly, this was done upside down, legs in the air, akimbo, without a clear plan for egress. I still had a lot to learn about under dash wiring technique on these cars, although, at the time, my active cycling days were not as far behind me as they are today. You'll notice a correlation here between a willingness to take on such tasks and those with a personal history of aerobic training and a steely resolve not to be defeated by circumstance.
Still, I look upon removing the seats to do wiring as something of a concession to the dark forces of the universe that inevitably overtake all of us and I will not go quietly without a struggle into my dark garage.
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