After finding out from Mario that the trunk lid on the donor hatch glass I found was rusted in several spots, I decided that I wanted to use the original one. On Friday Sara and I decided to get the trunk lid separated from the hatch glass so that it would be ready to take to Mario.
The first thing we needed to figure out was how to support the glass safely once the rear lift support struts were removed. The rear hatch weighs about 95 pounds, so it is not something I wanted crashing down on us.
We decided that a tire would do nicely to support the glass evenly and safely.
Next we removed the lift support struts from each side.
With the full weight of the rear hatch on the tire, we removed the two screws on each side that held the window edging to the trunk lid.
Next we removed the eight nuts securing the glass to the trunk lid.
With the nuts removed we were able to pull off the structural plate that compressed the glass to the trunk lid.
There was some butyl tape still holding the trunk lid to the glass. We determined that it would be incredibly difficult to apply the even force necessary to break this loose with the hatch so high in the air. We figured that if we lowered it we could use the weight of the glass to our advantage and lift up on the trunk lid.
I slowly worked from one side to the other lifting gently on the lid while applying slight downward pressure to the glass. After I had managed to break most of the lid free we both took a side and lifted it up and off of the glass.
Here is the trunk lid!
Notice the four white nylon washers. These will need to be saved and reused with the new glass.
Here you can see the single line of butyl tape that ran between the bottom of the glass and the top lip of the lid.
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