It simply does not make sense to remove the guard. The term GUARD should give you a clue to how important it is. I have a good size trimmer and removed the guard because a "professional" mower guy recommended it. I should have taken note that he was in shorts, shower shoes, no hearing protection, and no gloves his comment of the string turning faster. These were clues to not take his advice. It takes me about 2+ hours. I took the guard off and it only took a few minutes to put it back on. I wear pants, boots, gloves, and a long sleeve shirt (having skin cancer removed a few times teaches you to dress for the sun). The "free range" blade was quick to throw dirt, rocks, sticks and actually drew blood on my arms and legs. My weedeater has a bump head and without the cutting blade on the guard, my string became longer on one end then the other and I had to stop a couple times to find my side cutters and cut the line evenly. If I wanted to do some edging, I just flipped the weedeater over (guard toward the clouds) and did my edging. As for removing the guard to make the line move faster, this makes no sense. The only time there is a "slow down” of the line is when it hits the cutting blade but I am unsure how that would affect your work. If you need a faster weedeater then go buy a weedeater that has a stronger engine. Of course this is just my opinion but I don't see a benefit to removing the guard.