94 SL2 Odometer failure

Read one post from a search about failures of the odometer gear in early Saturns. There was a link to a source for the gear: http://www.odometergears.com/subpages/saturn.html and I was thinking about replacing mine in my 94 SL2. One of the posts said it wasn't too hard to get to after dropping the steering column. I'm reasonably mechanically inclined but I am concerned about working on the steering column with the SRS, I'd hate to have the airbag go off in the middle of working on the car.

should I worry about this if the battery is disconnected (or under any circumstances for that matter) and how hard is it to get to the speedo cluster with the steering wheel dropped?

yes, you should worry even with the battery disconnected. but im not saying its a hard thing to do, but i wouldnt trust in others who havent worked around them.

disconnect battery, pull fuse, wait a while, then you can mess with the airbags. but really, you want even have to touch the airbags at all. just disconnect battery, drop steering column, remove dash pad and cluster bezel, then remove instrument cluster. that all in a shorten form.

thanks Saturnspeed. I don't want to mess with the airbags, just don't want them to mess with me ;-)