M635 Front Air Dam removal/de-federalization advice needed

[passta]

Started the first of my winter projects on my M635 now that my winter garage space has opened up, one of the more major ones, is removing the front air dam to refinish and repaint before spring. I followed this post, viewtopic.php?t=27063 moved the oil cooler to get to the 4ea 13mm bolts, after removing those, and the 2ea 10mm on each side of the bumper I couldn't get it off the car, but it was loose. So I loosened up the carriage bolts that hold the euro bumper mounting brackets (2 on each bracket), to the frame, then the bumper came slid right off and I realized why I could not get it off the car by removing just those bolts like the post mentioned. On my car the mounting bracket ends that had the 13mm bolts, are welded to a big hunk of steel that Im pretty sure was installed there when the car was federalized.

This is where I am sort of stuck. I cannot get to all of the bolts on the inside of the euro bumper, to remove them to then separate the bumper and air dam because of this huge piece of steel, and the brackets also being welded to that same piece of steel. Is that my only way to get the air dam loose from the bumper, that is my immediate goal, but I want to clean up as much as I can correctly while I am in there.

My plan is to try to grind off the welds by the bracket ends as shown in the pics with the arrows, and/or also start cutting up the steel tube to see if I can get it off, unless there is a better way to separate the air dam from the bumper that I am not seeing or aware of? I'm worried I am going to damage the brackets. The left bracket seems to be obtainable thru a few places so I plan to start on that side with the grinding to see if that gets me there, but the right one looks like it's going to be more difficult to source.

[kronus]

That is a more thoroughly done federalization than mine was. However, the process should be pretty similar.

I borrowed a friend's plasma cutter and cut around the welds to separate the federalization bar from the bumper. Then, with it loose and moved out of the way, I was able to unbolt one of the bumper side pieces from both the metal bumper center and the airdam, and slide the reinforcement brace out of the side.

[passta]

Got it done, took about an hour with an angle grinder and a sawzall in a few spots, without damaging anything. And now about 20lbs lighter too! Actually took longer to take everything apart once I got the metal out with all the bolts. Now on to the fun part of refinishing all of it.