This forum is awesome!
I cloned the image to a larger SD card (only one i could get) - I updated the SN to match the original and did a factory reset, loaded the 3.5.0 firmware and all is good i am back up and running and WIFI is working perfectly!!
!
Toughest part was prying the back off, but using some plastic tools for prying left over from an iphone battery upgrade it came off without incident.
Thanks again!