Man, I need to find a place to host my pics... Photobucket or something...
I wanted to take a step back for a minute and go into detail about the removal of the dash since I am documenting this process to help others in the future.
In the pic above, you can see where I had to cut the dash frame to allow the wires from the fuse boxes on both ends of the dash to pass through. Your only other option is to disconnect about 50 or so wires from each end of the dash, label them, and hook them back up how you found them when you're done. I prefer snip-snip and gorilla glue, personally.
Above, you can see the problem suffered by 90% of Alero owners. The perfectly clean black dash frame to the right of the picture indicates where the glue has dried out and completely released the vinyl from the frame. On the left, you can see where the glue is still intact and the foam peeled off the back of the vinyl as I pulled it away.
Initially, I was using a razor blade scraper to try to remove the foam padding and glue from the dash frame. As mentioned earlier in the thread, using an angle grinder with a really thin disc is MUCH faster and more effective.
On a side note, WheelsNext jerked me around on the purchase of my rims so much, I decided to go with a different company. I spoke to a guy named Robin at WheelMax and he hooked me up with a 10% military discount on some sweet 18" gunmetal rims and Toyo Proxes FZ-4 tires for $1100, mounted, balanced, and shipped. Here's a link to the rims I ended up with:
http://www.wheelmax.com/product.asp?ProdId=10732
I contacted my buddy about getting the body kit installed and painted. I'm trying to head back to cincinnati from SoCal on the 29th of this month, so I'm pushing his time table pretty thin. I'm supposed to go meet with him this weekend to discuss time table and price. I am going to stop in LA on my way there and pick up the body kit, which came out to about $430 after tax.
More later...
-Brad