Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

^ I have no idea. I don't know what all the stains are other than it was really sticky. There were coins stuck in the brown / red stuff that I tried to pull out, but they wouldn't budge. There was also a large hole burnt in the carpet where it looks like someone left a lit cigarrete behind the driver's seat. I also found animal crackers, gummy bears, and tons of crumbs every where. The only good thing I did find in there was three screwdrivers that had some how fallen under the carpet.

SS RRR

iTrader: (2)

I was going to say... guaranteed there were kids in the back seat and dummies in the front. I'm sure the sticky crap was from a few of those thousand ounce big gulps being spilled. It's just beyond me why it looks as though no effort was made to clean it.
I got the wife's car as a hand-me-down for my daily after she got a new car and the back seat barely survived our first kid. Just after I got it I took the seat out and powerwashed that ****. Looks almost brand new.

mcalus

iTrader: (14)

It kills me every time I see that ugly *** tint....Good luck getting that off the back window without scraping the rear defrost off. LOL...

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

I figured out by all the papers and stuff I found in the car it was owned by a woman who is / was married. I think her name was Sheila and she worked at Babys R Us in New Jersey.

I'm not too concerned about the rear defrost. I don't even know how to work it and I own three fbodies. I just found out the seats fold down when I took them out of this car. Fixing the tint is one of the three things I'm going to do once it's finished along with an alignment and detailing it.

mcalus

iTrader: (14)

Yeah, im just giving you ****. I hate purple tint. DARN PEOPLE THAT USE WINDEX ON TINTED WINDOWS...sigh....

Other than that its coming real good

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

I messed around with the car today. I continued hacking on the door bars and my arms are super burnt and sore. I took the grinder back to the door bar bracketry to remove it. I ended up having to take the door latch assembly out to get to cutting the bracket. There are three T30 torx bit screws and two platic connectors you have to disconnect from the door handles.

Here's what it looks like:

The two long metal rods that stick off of it are the door lock and handle inside the car.

Then I moved onto grinding, grinding, grinding, and grinding some more. I was grinding so much my arms are now burnt from all the sparks hitting them. The door bars themselves are extremely thick metal and take a long time to cut through. Eventually, I cut through the bracket and half of the door bar:


I have no idea how people are saying they are unbolting these things from inside the door. I tried every wrech and socket at the shop and couldn't get the bolts out. I just decided to cut them out. I also was trying to cut out as much as the metal bracket inside the car as I could. It's rather thick metal and between all four of the brackets should add up.

I continued on cutting on the bracket towards the front of the car. The main problem is that the bar slants upwards as it heads towards the front making it very difficult to cut on. I got about half way up the bracket with my cutting and hit one of the door hinges.

Around this point my arms were hurting me so much I had to go get some welding gloves and throw them on.

After cutting to my breaking point I decided to throw the jump pack on the car and test out all the electronics and lights. As could be expected the only major thing that wasn't working too well was the driver's side window motor and the high beam headlights. I'm not too concerned about the high beams, but the window motors are a pain in the ***. That brings a grand total of 3/6 of them in all of my cars working. I'm going to replace the window motor and probably take out the high beams. I've read a few posts on here about them being about three pounds each removing everything. I think it's just the handle in the steering shaft that's broken, but I'm not too concerned about them.

I'm going to head back early on Thursday now that I'm out of school and continue hacking on the door bars. I'm going to order a window motor tomorrow to since I'm going to be pirating the one I was going to put in my 95. Hopefully, Thursday, I can finish up with the doors completely. Although, at this rate it seems like it's going to take forever.

CamaroRacing12

iTrader: (5)

good progress man....

InsaneAuto86

iTrader: (60)

very nice! Those door bars are a pain in the ***! I had to grind down sockets to unbolt the bars.

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

Thanks. I'm going to try and get our camera back so I can stop taking pictures on my phone.

I was thinking about doing that, but I only have one 10mm socket and didn't want to mess it up. That's the only way I could see unbolting them. GM must have some specialty tool to do it. The brackets are pretty heavy though. I'm sure all four of them will add up to around three pounds. It's just a ton of work to cut them out.

mcalus

iTrader: (14)

I have got a suggestion for you, this wont cost that much weight if any but while you have the carpet out you should try this.

https://ls1tech.com/forums/showthrea...ght=floor+hump

Just an suggestion

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

Thanks, I remember that thread. I might just have to do it. I'm going to check out how much work is involved in modifying the trans crossmember and we'll see. I might save it until I put the 4l80e in. At that time I'll need a new trans crossmember and I could modify that one. We'll see.

I'm also going to be cutting out the trunk area and modifying the trans hump. Here's what the trunk area will look like:
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/3...nitubs5se5.jpg
What the trans tunnel will look like:
https://ls1tech.com/forums/attachmen...6&d=1207737128

armyracer11

iTrader: (7)

are you going to take out the passenger airbag and the ac condencer and box, that make the engine bay cleaner and its good for like 15lbs

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

The ac is staying. It's one of the few amenities I'm not sacrificing. I'll be taking the heater out though along with both airbags. It's hot as ***** down here and I can't deal without having ac. Especially at the rate I have window motors dying.

Cross

iTrader: (10)

Holy Crap and I thought I could be OCD.

I have a few questions for you but first very nice work so far. Nice project.

Now the questions:
1) I did not see anyone say but did you ever figure out what the hell that black box was on the back drivers seat... I have one too...

2) When cutting out the metal you did from the door how weakened does that make it... it still looks like door panels would go on would they? I am just curious but mainly not for weight reduction and I am not ready to start that to much yet but because it looks so much easier to replace a power window motor that way lol.

3) You mention you cut the holes in the window level arms to make it easier on the motor... and quicker... I can see quicker but I would be worried about them losing integrity are you? I like that idea as well... its different lol.

Either way great thread to watch here.

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

Yeah, a lot of my friends have said that about me before. Usually in ways completely unrelated to cars. I have an affinity towards symmetry and making things look similar.

The black box controls the fuel pump and the rear ABS functions.

The material on the doors is actually fiberglass. It's really easy to cut through, but makes a huge mess. I cut it the best way I could to maintain the structural integrity of the support system for the door panels and window motors. It is still very sturdy. Cutting it out will make changing the window motors a million times easier. Especially the huge cut out on the left side.

I was worried about demeaning the integrity of the regulator until I actually looked at it. The main piece is 1/8th inch steel and extremely sturdy. I'd honestly say I could cut a ton more out of it and it would still be fine. The only reason I didn't is I wanted to leave the unit in and not have to hassle with removing it. If I removed it I could have cut a lot more out of it. Drilling out the holes with the unit installed can be annoying. If you removed the whole unit and had a drill press it would be amazingly simple and quick. You could also probably cut it like I did the fender metal. You cut out a bunch of boxes and leave material in between each cut. I like it now and It looks cool to boot.

Thanks, I enjoy people saying that.

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

I went down and worked a little on the car today. I got a little burnt out and stopped early to give the car a quick rinse off the best I could. I hadn't worked on the car in a long time and it was hot as ***** down there today. I still managed to get a decent amount of work done for dicking around. I also got some good pictures because my dad left the camera at home. Muahaha!

I started by continuing to hack out the driver's side door bar and bracket. Here's how the door bar looked like when I started working on it today.


I was going to try and cut it like a backwards L to remove it, but it was a huge pain in the ***. Instead I cut straight up to remove it and had it out in about 10 minutes. Here's what the bracket looks like now that I got the door bar out of there:


Here's the whole thing layed out:


As you can see it's rather large. From the research I've done on here 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. I'm pretty excited about that. It was actually really easy to cut out versus what I've seen from people trying to unbolt them. Not to mention I also took out an extra 1.78125 lbs doing it this way. The door feals really good. It's amazingly light and easy to close now. It doesn't squeek anymore either which is just an added bonus.

After I finished the driver's side I moved on to the passenger's door. I started by drilling the regulator, but quickly got tired of messing with it. It's a lot of work to drill through all this metal and makes a mess. Here's how far I got today though:


Once I got burnt out on messing with that I decide to pop the dash pad off to examine how to run the front bars of my cage that will be going in. I guess I didn't use the most care in the world considering the thing is 15 years old. I ended up pretty much shattering the whole thing:


I now need to add that to my list of things I need to buy for the car, but oh well. Hopefully they aren't too expensive. I'm going to try and get down there on Monday or Tuesday and finish on the passenger's door. I'm also going to change out the driver's side window motor, remove the insulation from the door panels, and maybe start on the dash board. I'm working on a huge write up about all the work I did removing the door bars and making the doors as light as possible with pictures. I'll post it up once I finish it tonight.

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

Here's my Door Bar Removal / How to Make your Doors Super Light Write Up. It was a lot of work so any feed back or comments would be greatly appreciated:

http://lsxextreme.com/showthread.php?t=833

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the dash pad is like 165 at gmparts direct

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

^ Wow, that blows. I'll try and find one locally or at a junkyard. They'll probably shatter though the same way when I go to take them out.

sweet-94z28

iTrader: (30)

The dash pads have that vel-cro and if you go one at a time and try to flex it as little as possible, it comes out pretty well. Mine actually cracked from hitting a pot hole in my 1994. My 1998 T/A also has a crack that was just there one day after going out to it while it was in the sun. They are way too cheap and cost way too much IMO.