I was going to leave the steering wheel in place because I was afraid of the airbag. My brother in law, an MB dealer tech, convinced me that it was very quick and easy to remove the wheel and that it would make things much more accessible. His advice was very helpful. Once I looked at the manual to know the exact order of things, it took only a few minutes to get the wheel the heck out of the way. That sure made the instrument cluster easier to deal with as well as just better general access to everything on the left side.

I did my pods and a heater core replacement last year and it seems like I remember about 15 hours in the whole thing. I did it in the heat of the summer and I opened all four doors and had a high speed squirrel cage fan blowing through the car making it bearable. I also put it on my lift and raised it up just enough where I could easily climb into the seats or could stand next to the car with the dash about armpit high. This gave me the best of both worlds, stand or sit, and kept me from having to stand on my head while working under the dash.

Best of luck with it,