jasons

the air con rad is really light, hardly worth removing for weight saving. ( I have a spare kicking about so I know it does not weigh much)
You could get the gas sucked out legally.
If it hiised it all out, then its probably full of air. I just cut the pipes on my old one at it had rotten pipes, so didn't have any gas in.
Removing the ac rad did not make a difference to the cooling at all, the stat will keep it at 90degrees as long as it can.
It may be worth wiring up a switch to activate the ac fans if your going to rag it, or jet wash out all those dead flies stuck in the rad!