Removing the trim without kinking or otherwise damaging it can be difficult, especially in the case of this cowl trim. It has no screws or nuts and presses into place. Because of the bend in the middle it is easy to put a kink in the piece which would require a lot of work to straighten back out. I started out by going 1/4" at a time until I got further along. Once I got near the middle I started the other side and then removed the center. I have found pieces tend to like to return to where they have been, so I intend to polish this piece and reinstall it because it was in good shape. The red mark on the hood is a crease but Adam said they will be able to fix it.
I had to drill out some of the more stubborn screws and of course the rivets for the hood latch cable.
As was the case on my car the rubber mounts for the condenser were broken. I wasn't completely happy with my last solution so I'll have to find a more suitable replacement.
I took lots and lots and lots of pictures of me pointing at things and then pointing to all the bolts that hold it in. This is because when I begin to reinstall the many pieces back on the core support it won't be evident where everything goes without a good reference.
The battery tray won't be usable, but fortunately I think mine survived the impact.
The holy shadow shows a few of the many holes, most of which all have clips for screws and bolts to thread into. It was very tempting to leave all the braces bolted on and just have the piece sand blasted and powder coated, particularly given the heat with no shade, but I know that wouldn't stand and for the rest of the time I owned the car it would drive me nuts knowing I had it apart this far and didn't take the small extra effort to do it right.
And further disassembly in the shade next to a fan whenever possible.
Eventually I got the remaining clips removed from the core support
One area that took considerable time that I never considered was removing the rubber mud guards from the inner fender. They were stapled through the metal.
It was a multi step process. After carefully pulling the rubber free, I used a screwdriver to pry each staple up then pliers to pull out the remainder. These would have promoted premature rust and removing them will make for a much more durable and longer lasting piece. I'll pre-drill small holes before the powder coating so that I can reinstall the mudguards with bolts and washers.
Finally, I had a fully stripped core support. There were a few places on the metal lips that had some bent metal, so I straightened those out with vise grips and hammers.
If my memory serves me correct I'm pretty sure that I can reuse my driver side fender, so I'll keep this one as a spare in case something happens to this or Dad's car in the future. You can also see some of the rust and dirt that didn't end up in my eyes or down my glove.
