I been doin some body work on my 84 N/A and i was wondering how to take it off to get the vents cut into it. I'm pretty sure it has to be cut off. I dont want it to look like a hack job either. anybody help?

 

the nose panel has 4 phillips screws where the hood rests- and 4 (maybe 6) 4mm nuts- 2 on the inside of each headlight bucket (lights must be up to get to them)

good luck.

 

Early cars (and 924's, not 924S's) had the nose panel spot-welded on. Needs to be cut off. I'm pretty sure you can modify it then to just screw back on.

 

hasanybody on this forum done it before

 

One thing to watch out for. When I pulled my nose panel, it had a big bracket welded on the back of it. Is this normal for NA cars? I thought it should have nothign attached to the back of it.

 

dunno havent done it yet tryin to find out a little more myself befiore i dive in there

 

I just got done doing mine a few months ago. I kind of destroyed mine and bought a new replacement. You are going to have to cut it off. Then you can drill a few holes and mount the original or a replacement.

You definately want to take the bumper off before you start cutting. If you have a weld remover, then you can drill the welds out. See of you can find that tool. It will make your job simplier.

 

yea cause i'm doin a turbo conversion got the engine for cheap and it works and everything else and didn't come out as expensive as everyone else said it would. so i need to take the nose off to install the intercooler

 

Ok, early 944s are welded, mine had to be cut out. later ones have three screws, just drill holes and modify it after with three screws.-chris

 

There's a post somewhere in the archives about drilling
out the spot welds with a special drill bit. I haven't done
the search myself. But, it shouldn't be too hard to find.

 

Those spot weld bits suck. They are maybe good for a couple of welds, but for as many spots that are holding on an early panel, no way.

I'd say just count on destroying the factory panel, and get a replacement. If I remember right, there's 10 spot welds on the top of the panel to the left and right of the hood release. There's probably close to 15 on the bottom of the panel just above the bumper.

Use a high speed grinder with a cut-off wheel, or a cut-off tool, it'll make short work of the spot welds.

 

I posted some time ago about removing a welded on panel. It is not a lot of fun to do for one, you really need to use a good spot weld cutter. Note that you will leave a ton of holes in this panel when you do this, so go as small a cutter as you can and still pick up the welds. I used a cheaper spring loaded center 5/16" cutter but I'm thinking you should go smaller. You will have trouble getting the welds off near the fender to panel just under the corner of the headlights. I can tell you that the welded on panels do not have the center support as part of this nose panel, it is however on the removable/later panels. On the early panels, the support is welded (IIRC) to the structure of the car. You just might want to pick up a later style nose piece, rework that to suit you, then remove the existing one, drilling only thru the panel's sheet metal, not thru the structure's.

Top panel of course is the welded on one, note support piece and extra mount tabs on the bottom panel (later model).


Cutting the welds in the far right hand part will be a challenge without destroying the panel your removing. This lower panel still has a little of the cars structure on it yet. You'd be better off for access, to completely cut the panel off to the left about 3", then grind the panel sheet metal away. Do not damage/destroy the car structure.


I strongly recommend you think about this, and carefully plan how your going to attack it. Good luck!