Mark's 1G Winter Projects

[Mark Leasure]

Originally Posted by JET

The door beams weigh a bit, but not that much. It was probably about 2lbs each. The black tar paper/sound deadening stuff on the floor was more than that. Not sure if you have tackled that yet or not.

I was looking around and no one actually publishes the actual weight of the door bracing, but from some of the banter and judging by material thickness it looks to be north of 10 lbs each. I'll weigh them when I remove them and publish it.

Yep most of the deadening material has been removed too, I still have some left on the fire wall to remove. I exposed it after I took the HVAC box out.

Originally Posted by Goat Blower

I remember Shep saying something back in the day about the power window assemblies weighing hardly anything more than the manual ones. Speedglass side windows would make a difference though.

There's a lot of inner structure around the b-pillars down where the ABS computer used to be. Not sure how much of that you can take out, but there's definitely some fat to trim there.

They are light, but I removed the factory harness and I'm not going to power the doors for window functions. Both crank assemblies are around 3 lbs! I'll check into the ABS stuff, good recommendation!

[JET]

Originally Posted by Mark Leasure

I was looking around and no one actually publishes the actual weight of the door bracing, but from some of the banter and judging by material thickness it looks to be north of 10 lbs each. I'll weigh them when I remove them and publish it.

I am quite positive it wasn't anything close to that. I took mine out years ago and I remember thinking that all the work was definitely not worth it. I would guess it was about 5lbs each. The metal wasn't that thick for them. I didn't fully remove them though, just cut them off at the ends so I didn't have to drill the spot welds and possibly mess up the door skin.

Doing this saves 20lbs per door (factory glass is still in)-

[Mark Leasure]

Just got the passenger side door weight reduction done. I weighed the crash beam and it came to just a little over 12 lbs. I took out the electric window motor and it weighed as much as both mechanical crank setups combined. Not that they weigh a lot. I’ll post a pic as soon as photobuckets site starts working again. Drilling spot welds was easy, I just wrapped tape around a drill bit so it could not penetrate too far into the door. I used piano wire to break the adhesive bond between the crash beam and the door skin. Then an air body saw to remove the door metal and an angle grinder to cut the beam. It took around an hour and a half to get it all wrapped up. Not bad for that type of weight savings!
I also took the brake booster out, it was a little lighter than what I expected at around 8 lbs. I need to machine an adaptor bracket to fit up the other master cylinder I ordered.
So far so good!

[Mark Leasure]

Picture of door work