Cutting off a spare tire well?

A 94 wagon hit the local yard today and I grabbed what I could with the hand tools I had. Spent too much money on crap but now I have a bunch of extra crap.

Anyway this car has a nice, rust free spare tire well that I would love to extract and graft onto my car where the spare tire well is made of rust held together with fiberglass.

The only tool I have at my disposal that seems appropriate is a cordless sawzall. Would that work to cut this thing out or will I just destroy it. I'm pretty good at destroying things, but I'd like to avoid it this time if I can.

Also what's the trick to getting the rear hatch open from the inside? I don't want to break the glass when I go back.

What works for me is bringing one of those portable batteries, for jump starting. I'm assuming the battery is not there, so just connect the battery to the battery cable under the hood. Now you have power to the car. So you should be able to pop the glass from the inside or outside.

Tom

For lack of a battery, you can pull the cover off of the gate from the inside if you remove the spare cover, and the storage compartment. There will probably be two screws on the wings of the cover. The rest of it is held on by tree fasteners. With the rear foot well cover lifted, just yank on the bottom to dislodge the fasteners. Then get down in the foot well, reach up under the cover, and trip the tang on the bottom of the latch. The gate glass will pop, and you can remove the CHSL to keep it from locking again.

A sawzall will work, but an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel is easier for a lot of it. The sawzall will grab parts like the spare mount, and just vibrate it, because it has nothing to hold it still. This goes for any reinforcements that are not touching the outer shell. I have cut a number of these off, so have fun. Try to get as much of the inside of the spare well as you can. Cut along the frame on the inside, and above the trim line on the outside. The back of it, by the bottom of the tail light has about 4 layers of metal at various depths, and is the hardest to cut through. A combination of sawzall and angle grinder/cutoff wheel is probably the easiest way to get a clean removal.

I have one of the 700 watt cheapie generators ($88.99 on super special) from Harbor Freight, and can use my standard plugin tools. It will run for about 4 hours on one gallon of 2 stroke mix.

Black-Cherry car too looks like. Sad! Need to grab all the black rub strips!

Nice work,Pat.

Wow, seeing those pics of a much worse case of rot being repaired makes me very hopeful!

Thanks for the tips. By the way, how do you remove the metal side belt trim without wrecking it?

The trim is held on by 4-5 screws; one in the door jam, and 3-4 under the lip of the wheel opening. Remove the screws. Then you must push down on the trim, disengage the trim from the bottom of the clips, and pull the bottom out. The trim will be able to lift off of the top fingers of the clips, and you have it in your hand. The clips are different colors, and you must put them back where that color came from. Installation is the reverse.

If you have trouble getting the screws along the top of the wheel opening out, grab them with a channel lock pliers, by the point and head, then give them a wiggle. It will break the years of grime holding them in place, and you should be able to easily turn them out with a Phillips screwdriver.

Thank you all, especially Fred's tips there. Mission accomplished

I went with tool I had- the Harbor Freight sawzall, two packs of blades and 5 charged batteries. It was just enough to do the job.

That was the most challenging thing I've done at a junkyard to date!

You should have grabbed the wing windows while you were there. Especially the driver's side. The driver's side seems to be more prone to having a hinge come off, but both sides are subject to it.

Yeah both of those windows are in good shape. I have a few other things I want to pull off that wagon, it should be there another 2-3 weeks. The windows I'll probably go back and grab maybe tomorrow or Monday.

If I could I'd grab just about everything. Even the windshield is in better shape than the one I've got in my car. No idea how I'd manage that one though!

That really looks like a solid parts car! Hope it gets stripped before being crushed!

i alway thought it would look better to just cut it off and weld in a flat bottom is the quarter would look more like the other side. has anyone one done that?

It has been done, but you can only put a mini spare in the well.