Mounting an original Mossberg heat shield on a 590A1 with ghost ring sights

[sgtpepper]

I have finally managed to get my hands on an original heat shield for the 590A1 (Mossberg article no 16335P). Happy, happy, joy, joy!

Now, when sitting here and eagerly trying to install it, I come to the chilling conclusion that the heat shield is only installable if you remove the from sight, since you're supposed to slide the heat shield on to the barrel from the top down. I have the ghost ring model, with the front sight soldered (or something like that) onto the barrel. I guess it takes a blow torch and a good amount of hammer blows to get that sucker off .

So, have anyone installed this kind of heat shield on the ghost ring model? Is it doable to pry open the heat shield so that I can drop it over and onto the barrel, or would that ruin it?

 

[sgtpepper]

I managed to get the heat shield onto the barrel!

For future reference if someone else is trying the same; I carefully pried open the front mount of the heat shield a bit by using a bar clamp and applying some pressure on each side of the mount. This opened up the mount just enough so I could press it down on the barrel.

I taped the barrel with gaffer tape to prevent scratching. When the front mount was in place I removed the tape and moved the shield as far back as needed on the barrel in order to get the back mount to slide onto the barrel as well. It was actually quite easy.

I haven't mounted the spacer on the front mount yet, but here's a picture of the gun right now: