Haha, wish I had seen this in time. Yeah, there has been anywhere from 1/8" to 1/4" of sliding space on every aw4/4.0 pair I have ever dealt with.
I do have a brand new remanufactured torque converter I bought in 2010 (...and then found out the trans I got it for, from a 99, wouldn't natively work with my 96, and it was my DD, so I wanted to slam a new trans in and drive it instead of dinking around swapping parts while it was out, leading to me learning way more than I ever wanted to about AW4s and writing that other thread) and got as far as filling with fluid and mating to the trans before tossing it in storage and forgetting about it. I gave the trans it was in away to another local
member just to get it out of my way and can't sell the TC to save my life now. Cost me $160 new, I've been asking $50 for the converter. If you can figure out how I should ship a TC with fluid in it without being deemed a terrorist when the package starts leaking ATF, and are interested, let me know.
You can probably just cut the welds as long as the area on the TC "feet" under the bolt head is undamaged, though. The flexplate is thin enough that I doubt the area not clamped by the bolt head contributes much torque transfer, really.
Make sure you put the big load spreading washer/plate with the bolt holes in it over the flexplate and under the bolts, btw. I have seen people put it between the crank and the flexplate, which will result in the flexplate cracking much faster than it otherwise would. And (I doubt you are unaware of this, but it sucked to watch a friend learn the hard way...) make sure you have the two BH to engine block alignment dowels in the lower bellhousing bolt holes or it'll eat the converter neck, pump, and input seal in a hurry.
