MAGK944

Real life experiences please. I need to know the best way of removing the welded nose/badge panel from an early car and what if anything needs to be done to it to fit a late car.

TIA Mike

V2Rocket

you have to drill/cut out the spotwelds. thats what everyone tells you. but then they dont tell you where the welds are. lol.

i was about ready to just get a grinder and start attacking my car before i thought i might wait for that information to come up.

Marcquito

Okay, I HAVE DONE THIS. And IT SUCKS. You can definitely see the spot welds where the nose panel is attached. You just need the right light so you can see the little indentations.There are probably 50 or more total. The real bitch is on the bottom under the nose panel... geez. Also, some of the welds are messy and big and I had to use a chisel to cut some of the metal away to get it to remove. Man, what a pain in the ***. I don't suggest anyone do this unless you have another nose panel available to replace it with because you will sure as hell take up most of your day and want to break it off.

Another thing- after it's removed you will see a huge series of holes where it was removed. The holes must be welded up or put a custom plate over them or something...

The tools I used:

-air drill with 3 or 4 different ends to get into different corners
-aviation shears
-hammer
-chisel

I have pics of the aftermath- but those are on my Mac and I left my stupid charger at my apartment and the damn thing is dead. Hell- I'm with the car right now. I could take some pics later today of my trouble to show you that you don't want to do it.

alex

Mike, I have one from the silver car that is in decent shape.

alex

Obviously needs a good paint job. There is one minor dent that could be fixed easily, its hard to see in the pic.

V2Rocket

what would be the easiest way to take it off if i were doing a full turbo-nose conversion?

Hawk36

I second what V2 asked....about the turbo nose conversion???

Marcquito

Well, it would be your only option- to drill it off. I would recommend you get all of your supplies next to you for the conversion: the bumper, nose panel, F/R fenders, etc, etc... and let it sit next to you and "watch" you take off the early nose panel. That way when you feel like hell from kicking that thing's *** you can look over at your beloved S2/Turbo conversion and get a enthusiasm-boost and keep drilling! Man, when I drilled that thing off I was thinking "****... I should have left this thing on..." My soul purpose for removing it was to knock out some dents!

I'm going to take some pics of my car and the nosepanel after I eat something so I can show you how many holes I had to fawk with.

V2Rocket

they can watch.

pics plz./

Marcquito

Ok, I walked over and took some pics to help discourage you guys from thinking you can do this in a matter of minutes:












^^^Enjoy my first person shooter pic of the tool I used to destroy the spot welds. Of course, this dandy device had a different attachment, but you get the idea.

To give you an idea of how long it had taken me to do this job- I started one night after I enjoyed some good eats and worked for a few hours only to get half way finished. I continued the next morning, so I would say a total of 3 hours of careful work.

MAGK944

Thanks Alex, but it's a 931 nose panel that I am trying to remove and not damage too much.

V2Rocket

looks like im going to obliterate my stock panel

KuHL 951

I tried getting a 931 panel with vents off at the junkyard and after removing the top spot welds I realized there were twice as many on the lower edge. I gave up and grabbed 3 pairs of manual sunroof latches instead. It just wasn't worth it for me.

Marcquito

Destroy it.

roman944

and the only way to get it out of there is to take teh welds off? no way to remove the crash bar or w/e it attaches to?