(Apologies if this isn't the right place for this!)

I recently bought a 42" Panny plasma and have it in an Ikea flat-panel entertainment center. It looks nice, but it'd look even nicer mounted to the back of the cabinet, especially since the stand is about 1/2" too deep for the entertainment center.

There's only one problem -- there's only about 3-4" of clearance on each side of the TV, making it tricky to reach around back. The only other wall mount I've used (a smaller Sanus tilt mount) required you to reach behind the TV and snap a couple locking levers. I'm not sure I have enough clearance to REACH levers like that.

Are there any mounts that I could hang the TV on "unlocked" without too much risk? Or should I invest in a full-motion mount so I could pull the screen out a bit to reach behind it?

Spend the extra money and get a full-motion (articulating) mount. I did, and I am very glad I did. My TV is also new so I am constantly reaching in the back tinkering with the hookups. Even if it wasn't new though, think about it this way, are you really gonna want to unmount your TV just to get to its backside every single time you get a new component that needs to connect to it? Over time, you'll definitely be needing to do this, for example, if you get a game console, a dvr, a blue ray player, a media pc, an audio/video receiver, etc. Heck, even if you just wanted to hook up a camcorder to view some recently shot video, that'd be a hassle.