Best way to remove trim brackets?

[burninator]

I have my Z's interior gutted, but I still have the brackets that held all the old panels and dash and stuff on. They scare passengers and I get my clothes caught on them when I'm working on stuff. I think I see spot welds on some of them, but not on others. Are they all held on the same way? What's the best way to remove them?

[Kenji]

with a cut off wheel and/or grinder

[burninator]

Thanks, I'll try that. It was either that or try using the air chisel to break them off.

[ritrebor]

I picked this up at harbor freight and it works on getting the spot welds off.

 

ritrebor

[z2go]

Drilling them with the above mentioned style drill is going to be your best bet, second best would be grind the area where the spot weld is down until it is thin enough to break off... you don't want to hit it with the chisel because those welds are kind of strong... you might warp and bend the metal behind it. For that matter, so will grinding if you go too fast.

 

I'm curious, what do you have in your former dash area? A custom gauge box or anything?

[burninator]

That drill bit would have been great. What I ended up doing was grinding several of the largest brackets that stick out the furthest off with an angle grinder. That worked okay, but took a long time and it was hard to get the grinder in several places. If a person had something lower profile like an air grinder it would be easier. You do have to be careful not to grind too fast or get too deep because it's hard to tell when you've actually ground through the bracket. Most of the brackets I just left if they didn't seem to dangerous.

 

Right now I just have a couple switches mounted on a bent piece of aluminum. When I get around to mounting gauges I will just stick them on a metal plate or something. I'm not getting too fancy, it's just a race car and for me the simpler and lighter I can make it the better without getting to ghetto. I'm not going to win any shows with it, but it's functional. I'll post pics when I get a bit further so you guys can point out everything I did wrong.