Front guard removal?

[CORTYA]

Hi there has anyone out there removed/unpicked a front guard/wing from a MK1 cortina? Im replacing the sill panels (bought on Ebay AU)on both sides and want to know how people remove the spot welds where the guard is attached to a "patch/fill type panel" near the A pillar? Please keep in mind I'm doing this job at home, i have most tools or and can access most, but not expensive panel shop type devices. Forgive me if it sounds rough but would spreading the flange carefully with a chisel/screwdriver and running a power hacksaw in between be disasterous?? There are only about 6 or 7 spotwelds in total. The rest of the spotwelds requiring removal are easily accessible with my trusty spotweld remover.

I have attached a photo which will clear things up a little.
This gives the members more indication as to what i was referring to, it also has arrows pointing to the exact locations.

Any help would be much appreciated, i want to get this thing off, so i can really get the ball rolling..


Thanks in advance.

[zombie289]

the guy who did all my sill repairs, unpicked the section of the guard indicated in your pic, in order to access the area, but left the rest of the guard secured so not to go through the hassles of re-aligning the guard, setting gaps etc, he just propped that section of guard out the way so he had access to the front of the sill. (hope that makes sense!!)
cheers

[jewels]

you can buy a special drill bit that panel beaters use for just this job

its specically designed to drill out spot welds

called a panel drill i think

sounds like thats the drill you have been using :)

makes the job a lot easier.

but that area looks like a drill cant get in there which is a bugga

i reckon the air chisel is the way to go for that area

[CORTYA]

Hi fellas, Yeop you're right you can't access it the usual way, but however i did unpick them with absolutely no damage at all to either panel. I tried my theory and oh so carefully spread a small gap, just above and below the spotweld. Just enough as to not stretch or distort the panels to any great degree and then ran a hacksaw blade protruding out of the hackssaw between the 2 panels. Sawing carefully i managed to carefully seperate the 2 panels evenly.
This probably could have been done with a sabre saw or the like, but i didn't like the idea of getting too % *% *% *% *y and skewing the blade off track. My approach was slowly but surely.

Thanks for the advice guys, keep up the good work.

[jewels]

sounds like your patience has paid off cortya

some others may not have gone as easily as you have and would have made a mess of it :)