gutting doors..
03-23-2010, 02:23 AM
#24
I know you already asked me for pictures, but... If you cut the area that the doors bars attach to the door out also you can pull an extra 2ish lbs per bar. Take the window regulator out, bolt it down, and take a drill press with a hole saw on the end to it. I did mine it the car and it took forever. The regulator is about 1/4 inch steel and really heavy. Removing weight from it will also make your window go up quicker.
03-23-2010, 02:33 AM
#25
I wrote this for my old site, but it should help you out. I know a couple of the pictures don't work:
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I know everyone that owns an Fbody has had some passenger that for some odd reason can't manage to close the door all the way or complain that they are too heavy. I've managed to solve all these problems upon tearing into the doors attached to my 93.
I started by removing the door panels. Upon removing them I took a look.
Here's around what your stock door should look like:
The first thing I did once I removed the door panels is remove the speaker and it's housing from the door:
The aftermarket speakers that were installed weigh 2.75lbs for both of them and both of the speaker brackets weigh 1.25lbs.
I then examined the door to see where all the bracing and tracks for the window regulators go up. I started drawing lines in pencil to see where I could cut out the most fiberglass from the door.
In order to cut the door fiberglass I started off with an air power angle grinder with a small cut off wheel. It made a humongous mess of fiberglass dust that promptly made me switch to using an air powered saw with a jig saw blade. It cut down on the dust and mess considerably. In doing this process I'd really recommend wearing one of those white masks that covers your mouth and nose.
Here's what my driver's side door looked like after I got finished cutting the extra door fiberglass out:
And here's the passenger door:
In doing so I removed a lot of material. Here's the fiberglass that I removed from the driver's side door:
From both of the doors I managed to remove 1.90625 lbs of fiberglass.
After cutting out the fiberglass from the doors I checked out the window regulators. If you've never owned an Fbody with a dead window motor prepare to. You will at some point. Everyone knows how notorious these things are for dying all the time. In order to elongate the lives of my window motors I decided to make it a little easier for them to do their job. I measured out the center of the regulator and drew a line. I started with a small drill bit and made a pilot hole on the line. I then used a stepped drill bit and went to work. After I finished drilling as much as I could I broke out my 11/16ths hole saw and started drilling again. Here's what the regulator looks like now that I swiss cheesed it:
I'm not sure how much weight this removed as it made a ton of metal shavings, but it should be rather significant to the window motor. The main piece of the regulator is 1/8th inch thick steel and really sturdy. In no way does this demean the structural integrity of the regulator. You won't have to worry about them collapsing so drill away.
After removing all of the small things I decided to move onto the really large portion of the weight savings from the doors. I checked out how the door bars are attached to the doors. This is the passenger's door. Here's how the bars mount towards the rear of the door:
The door lock bracket is really in the way. Here's what the front mounting point looks like:
The hard part is that the bar slants upwards as it approaches the front of the car. This adds to the difficulty of removing them.
Now at this point you have a couple options for removing the door bars. If you want to just unbolt them you can. The problem is that they are not only bolted in place, but glued. That along with the fact that you won't be able to get a normal wrench on them and using a normal sized socket always gets stuck against the door. You can take a socket and grind it down so that it won't bind against the door. You just need to weld them to something that you can turn. Picture:
You can also use ratcheting wrenches and stick a ground down socket in there:
The bolts at the front are 10mm and the rears are 15mm.
---------------------------------------------------
I know everyone that owns an Fbody has had some passenger that for some odd reason can't manage to close the door all the way or complain that they are too heavy. I've managed to solve all these problems upon tearing into the doors attached to my 93.
I started by removing the door panels. Upon removing them I took a look.
Here's around what your stock door should look like:
The first thing I did once I removed the door panels is remove the speaker and it's housing from the door:
The aftermarket speakers that were installed weigh 2.75lbs for both of them and both of the speaker brackets weigh 1.25lbs.
I then examined the door to see where all the bracing and tracks for the window regulators go up. I started drawing lines in pencil to see where I could cut out the most fiberglass from the door.
In order to cut the door fiberglass I started off with an air power angle grinder with a small cut off wheel. It made a humongous mess of fiberglass dust that promptly made me switch to using an air powered saw with a jig saw blade. It cut down on the dust and mess considerably. In doing this process I'd really recommend wearing one of those white masks that covers your mouth and nose.
Here's what my driver's side door looked like after I got finished cutting the extra door fiberglass out:
And here's the passenger door:
In doing so I removed a lot of material. Here's the fiberglass that I removed from the driver's side door:
From both of the doors I managed to remove 1.90625 lbs of fiberglass.
After cutting out the fiberglass from the doors I checked out the window regulators. If you've never owned an Fbody with a dead window motor prepare to. You will at some point. Everyone knows how notorious these things are for dying all the time. In order to elongate the lives of my window motors I decided to make it a little easier for them to do their job. I measured out the center of the regulator and drew a line. I started with a small drill bit and made a pilot hole on the line. I then used a stepped drill bit and went to work. After I finished drilling as much as I could I broke out my 11/16ths hole saw and started drilling again. Here's what the regulator looks like now that I swiss cheesed it:
I'm not sure how much weight this removed as it made a ton of metal shavings, but it should be rather significant to the window motor. The main piece of the regulator is 1/8th inch thick steel and really sturdy. In no way does this demean the structural integrity of the regulator. You won't have to worry about them collapsing so drill away.
After removing all of the small things I decided to move onto the really large portion of the weight savings from the doors. I checked out how the door bars are attached to the doors. This is the passenger's door. Here's how the bars mount towards the rear of the door:
The door lock bracket is really in the way. Here's what the front mounting point looks like:
The hard part is that the bar slants upwards as it approaches the front of the car. This adds to the difficulty of removing them.
Now at this point you have a couple options for removing the door bars. If you want to just unbolt them you can. The problem is that they are not only bolted in place, but glued. That along with the fact that you won't be able to get a normal wrench on them and using a normal sized socket always gets stuck against the door. You can take a socket and grind it down so that it won't bind against the door. You just need to weld them to something that you can turn. Picture:
You can also use ratcheting wrenches and stick a ground down socket in there:
The bolts at the front are 10mm and the rears are 15mm.
03-23-2010, 02:34 AM
#26
END OF 1ST POST
Either way will work. Once you manage to unbolt the bars from their brackets you have two options of removing them. Your first is taking a sawz all or similar cutting tool and just chopping them into pieces.
Your second option is utilizing the grommet in the front of the door. You'll need to remove the plastic inner fender from the wheel well and the front wheel on that side. You can then feed the bar through the grommet in the front of the door:
Instead trying to maximize the amount of weight I removed from the doors I chose another option. I decided to cut out as much of the bracket that holds the bars in place out. Then, cut the bars into pieces and remove them.
I started by removing the door lock assembly. The assembly is held in by three T30 torx bits. You just need to loosen them with a ratchet and undo the metal rods that connect to the outside door handle and lock assembly. Here's what the lock assembly looks like once removed:
This is an important and easy step to execute. When I started cutting I was attempting to avoid removing this due to lack of knowledge. I kept hitting the bracket and couldn't cut all the way:
Once I got the bracket out of the way it was easy sailing from there. I just took my time and cut as straight and as close to the door as I could on the bracket. The bracket has two sides as you can see in the above picture, so you have to cut through the front and then the back to remove it. After I cut the rear of the bracket off I cut the bar into pieces and removed it. Here's what half of the bar looks like:
Upon getting the first half of the bar out I moved on towards the front of the door. I cut the front bracket the same as I cut the rear. The only difference is the front one is not double sided so it's easier and less time consuming to cut through:
Here's what it looks like now that I got the whole thing out of there:
Here's the whole bar laid out with all of the pieces of bracket that I cut out:
As you can see it's rather large. From the research I've done the bars themselves weigh about 7 pounds a piece. I threw this one with all the extra parts of the brackets I cut out and together they weigh 8.78125 pounds for just the driver's side door. That's an extra 1.78125 pounds removed per door.
That brings the grand weight total removal for both doors to 25.35335 pounds. The doors themselves are still very sturdy, have all the attachments for the door panels, and the window motors work better than before. All in all this project is time consuming, but overall worth it. The weight savings is the main benefit, but you get a lot of nice little things that go along with it. The doors are now super easy to close. You won't have a passenger complain about them anymore. The window motors also go up faster and the weight reduction on the regulators will make the motors last longer. Now it's your turn to start cutting and let me know what you think. This was a lot of work so any feedback or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Total weight break down:
Front Speakers = 2.75 lbs
Front Speaker Brackets = 1.25 lbs
Door Fiberglass = 1.90625 lbs
Door Crash Bars and Brackets = 17.5625 lbs
Window Regulator Metal = 1.8846 lbs
Total = 25.35335 lbs
You can also get into the wiring now that you've removed the speakers. I'd say there is at least another 8 lbs in speaker, antenna, and stereo wiring in the car.
Either way will work. Once you manage to unbolt the bars from their brackets you have two options of removing them. Your first is taking a sawz all or similar cutting tool and just chopping them into pieces.
Your second option is utilizing the grommet in the front of the door. You'll need to remove the plastic inner fender from the wheel well and the front wheel on that side. You can then feed the bar through the grommet in the front of the door:
Instead trying to maximize the amount of weight I removed from the doors I chose another option. I decided to cut out as much of the bracket that holds the bars in place out. Then, cut the bars into pieces and remove them.
I started by removing the door lock assembly. The assembly is held in by three T30 torx bits. You just need to loosen them with a ratchet and undo the metal rods that connect to the outside door handle and lock assembly. Here's what the lock assembly looks like once removed:
This is an important and easy step to execute. When I started cutting I was attempting to avoid removing this due to lack of knowledge. I kept hitting the bracket and couldn't cut all the way:
Once I got the bracket out of the way it was easy sailing from there. I just took my time and cut as straight and as close to the door as I could on the bracket. The bracket has two sides as you can see in the above picture, so you have to cut through the front and then the back to remove it. After I cut the rear of the bracket off I cut the bar into pieces and removed it. Here's what half of the bar looks like:
Upon getting the first half of the bar out I moved on towards the front of the door. I cut the front bracket the same as I cut the rear. The only difference is the front one is not double sided so it's easier and less time consuming to cut through:
Here's what it looks like now that I got the whole thing out of there:
Here's the whole bar laid out with all of the pieces of bracket that I cut out:
As you can see it's rather large. From the research I've done the bars themselves weigh about 7 pounds a piece. I threw this one with all the extra parts of the brackets I cut out and together they weigh 8.78125 pounds for just the driver's side door. That's an extra 1.78125 pounds removed per door.
That brings the grand weight total removal for both doors to 25.35335 pounds. The doors themselves are still very sturdy, have all the attachments for the door panels, and the window motors work better than before. All in all this project is time consuming, but overall worth it. The weight savings is the main benefit, but you get a lot of nice little things that go along with it. The doors are now super easy to close. You won't have a passenger complain about them anymore. The window motors also go up faster and the weight reduction on the regulators will make the motors last longer. Now it's your turn to start cutting and let me know what you think. This was a lot of work so any feedback or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Total weight break down:
Front Speakers = 2.75 lbs
Front Speaker Brackets = 1.25 lbs
Door Fiberglass = 1.90625 lbs
Door Crash Bars and Brackets = 17.5625 lbs
Window Regulator Metal = 1.8846 lbs
Total = 25.35335 lbs
You can also get into the wiring now that you've removed the speakers. I'd say there is at least another 8 lbs in speaker, antenna, and stereo wiring in the car.
03-23-2010, 03:52 PM
#27
thanks.im going to go back threw this and clean my b.s post out and then maybne we can get this as a sticky up above..im going to swiss cheese my reg's also..my door bars im keeping in till i stop driving the car on the street..i have to measure and get a piece of aluminum bent up to replace my top carpeted piece on my door panel..that armrest part is the heaviest on the whole panel..when i do this ill ad to this page and get some weights..
03-24-2010, 06:42 AM
#30
Get some pic's up when you do them, I'd like to see what you come up with, maybe con ya into making a 2nd set 
I know the 275 rules require a door panel, I was going to do the wolfe and then just carpet them so it's finished, I think that will work yes?
I know the 275 rules require a door panel, I was going to do the wolfe and then just carpet them so it's finished, I think that will work yes?
03-24-2010, 01:02 PM
#31
yeah it would probley work..we really got no one up here to ask for what passes an dont seeing where just using the x275 rules at ned....i ask john but they know i aint running with them an get bitchy..i did tell him i had my panels in the trash an i was told to dig them out...ill get a pic up to show what im talking about replacing with metal..
03-24-2010, 01:29 PM
#32
Yeah I'd like to see it. I was going to put the wolfe door skins on, finish them with some ozite carpet and have a seam/bead sewn on around the outer edge so it looked nice.... I've seen a couple cars done this way and it looks decent. Door locks and the handles are the only things that are staying. Unless what you have planned looks good, in that case I'd be interested in buying a duplicate 
03-24-2010, 03:33 PM
#33
where my fingers an thumb are on the panels is what im talking about removing and then just replaceing with a thin sheet of aluminum and painting it semi gloss black seeing im going to paint and die my inside all black..the plastic arm rest piece i would just leave off..from the looks of the inside of the panel ones you gert the thick rubber part of it will be just a plastic part with a lip on it where the rubber part sat on.
03-24-2010, 06:30 PM
#34
Eeh, I dunno. I think you might be spinning your wheels to lose 2 lbs.
Wolfe door skins for me, and I will upholster them. The doors will look finished when I'm done, and I can't see anyone bitching about that.
Hell I asked the question about the fiberglass dash on YB a while ago and they told me that was fine as long as it wasn't a sheet metal dash or nothing at all. If that's o.k. to run, I can't see anyone complaining about the door skins. Raceweight is raceweight, I don't care how you get there as long as it's not under the weight I don't think they're gonna make a big stink. Show up with no door skins at all yeah someone will complain, but if they look finished, even if it's a tin sheet that's upholstered, noone's gonna care.
Wolfe door skins for me, and I will upholster them. The doors will look finished when I'm done, and I can't see anyone bitching about that.
Hell I asked the question about the fiberglass dash on YB a while ago and they told me that was fine as long as it wasn't a sheet metal dash or nothing at all. If that's o.k. to run, I can't see anyone complaining about the door skins. Raceweight is raceweight, I don't care how you get there as long as it's not under the weight I don't think they're gonna make a big stink. Show up with no door skins at all yeah someone will complain, but if they look finished, even if it's a tin sheet that's upholstered, noone's gonna care.
03-24-2010, 07:17 PM
#35
I agree race weight is race weight..shoot you know how i feel about carpet in the **** pit....the fiber glass dash i dont think they care due to it being factory appering an also some of the outlaw guys who droped down to run 275 already had them with race paks..i could be chasing my but for 2lbs...but ever pound counts and it would look factory 100% still..if you pick up your panel and feel it all the weight is in them 2 areas..with out that there its light hdpe plastic..its a cheaper way to me then droping the 200$ for wolfes stuff..you could do it your self for 50$
03-25-2010, 03:04 PM
#37
for a brake you can use two 2x4s..c clamp them together once you got your sheet metal in there straight an then bend..heating up the aluminum with a torch will make it easier to bend..as for the shear..just trace the pattern of the door panel from a piece of card board that you cut to the shape of the door..then once you got it transfered onto the aluminum just clamp it to a table and use a angle grinder with a cut of and zing threw it...give me a second and ill fig out how to make a bead roller for you...
03-25-2010, 04:00 PM
#38
LOL. You're funny. When I'm ready to start doing my own tin work I'll buy the right tools, I have NO problem doing that, and I have a 24x24 garage that as long as I can still work on the car in there, I'm good. Once I get that thing finished off like I want I'll have enough room for all that stuff, and if I have to I can always put some of the stuff in the basement of the house, clean out 1/2 of it and turn that into the sheet metal shop.
03-25-2010, 04:38 PM
#39
hey just giving you a idea how to make your own..i wish i had the space to get brakes and stuff in my garage but i can barely fit my car..ive use the 2x4 method for a brake before and the 90 degree angle iron one and they work..funny part is i learnd that stuff in auto body at school..had a teacher wh did auto body for almost 50 yrs..he used to show us how to do stuff old school and new school..