Take 'em out or leave 'em in?

So as everyone told me, I had to grind the heads of the bolts that held my front leaf-spring perches to the body of the car.

Now I have the inside portion of the clip nut and the inside 1/2 inch of the original bolt, floating up inside of the spring-perch mount plates. They are too big to slide out of the slots for the clip nuts. Should I drill/grind the clip-nut slots to make room and fish the suckers out of there? Or should I just leave 'em rattling aournd?

I don't want to compromise the structural ingegrity of the spring-perch mounts?

[QUOTE=NovaNate]So as everyone told me, I had to grind the heads of the bolts that held my front leaf-spring perches to the body of the car.

Now I have the inside portion of the clip nut and the inside 1/2 inch of the original bolt, floating up inside of the spring-perch mount plates. They are too big to slide out of the slots for the clip nuts. Should I drill/grind the clip-nut slots to make room and fish the suckers out of there? Or should I just leave 'em rattling aournd?

i have in the past cut the broken ones out with a torch. yes it can be done, be careful and go slow. if you can grab the remaining bolt with a pliers and blow the clip in a couple of places, you can get it small enough to either come out the hole or i believe you may be able to get it out the back of the spring perch. have a fire extinquisher handy and have some one there with you. best of luck!

It took me a very long time to complete this job. After grinding off the heads, and getting the perch off, I continued to grind the remaining threads down as close to the body mount as possible. I then forced the remaining piece out through the side access hole, actually bending the metal a little bit, but it was easy to bend back to its actual position. Go slow and you will get them out.