minus another 50 lbs

[gtluke]

- ABS harness
- Power seat belt harness & giant bracket thingy and controller
- Sound deadening

I have a garbage bag full of crap, it's got to be over 50lbs as it's starting to tear now.

I found a secret to getting the sound deadening up. smack it with a really really pointy hammer. I found one in my basement and I don't know what it's really for but it's like a hammer ice climbing pick thingy.
take's just one smack and a 2" x 1" piece will fling off. I tried to scrape it off, pick it off, rubber mallet it off, nothing. Gotta nail it with that pointy hammer. It puts a tiny ding in the floor but whatever, it comes off CLEAN and easy. That crap is heavy!

Once I got it up I stiched the floors. Once I ground off all the glue and most of the paint it was too late to turn around, but honestly it's not worth doing on our cars. There are SOOO many spot welds on all the pieces, and there really isn't that many sheets to weld together in the passenger compartment. I'm sure the one's up near the A pillars and firewalls are more important to get to but I'm still driving this car all the time so I can't rip it apart that much right now.
Then I smeared the floor with POR-15
I'm investigating replacing the factory subframe connectors with ones made out of actual 2x2 box tube instead of the sheetmetal C channel that's in there now. But that is going to take a lot of work. But the through the floor subframe connectors on our cars would work really well. Maybe next year I'll do it. It would be a mess with my shitty 110v welder anyway.
And yeah, you can't weld for sh*t with the undercoating under the car in place. If i turned up the heat any more on my welder the undercoating burn, and rise through and rape whatever weld I'm doing. So all my spot welds are too cold, but i'm sure they will work. No way could I get all that crap off the under of the car, especially since our fuel lines are held in place like a g string on a fat girl.

I'm even more impressed now with the build quality of our cars that I've scraped away at the chassis. Top notch assembly, not cheap for sure. This is what makes our cars NOT DSM's

that wire wheel worked WAAAAAY better than the cup. $4 harbor freight! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

you can see the pox marks from me smaking the floor to get the insulation up. it looks worse than it is becaues it leaves a dark tar smear at the hole from whatever the hell that insulation is made out of.

POR-15
Annoying that that paint is made in the town next to me but they won't sell it out of the factory. I have to mail order it. WTF!

 

[kartorium]

If you were to lay a bunch of dry ice in there you can just use a regular hammer and it pops right up. At least in the trunk of my car that is how I did it, no dents really.

 

[atc250r]

That's what I've heard too. Dry ice 4TW! Good work Luke!

John

 

[gtluke]

never thought of that. yeah i think the stuff is just so hard and so form fitting that you can't get it up, but it's malleable enough not to break with a regular hammer.
I should have tried this in the winter /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
I bet in the middle of the summer it's a real bitch.

 

[kartorium]

For sure, never try it in the middle of the summer unless you have dry ice.

Nice job on the loss of weight though. I know your car has got to be getting pretty light now, have you weighed it after this or recently?

 

[gtluke]

no weights. i need to take it to the track or to one of the sewer plants i work at in the city where there is a car scale.
once the interior is back togther i'm pretty confident i have the lightest stock appearing gvr4. the only things left to remove take away from the appeal of the car. power steering, air conditioning, back seat...
are there crash bars in the rear doors? it's usually full of my bike gear anyway back there /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
actually the one thing i can think of left is an aluminum driveshaft, and maybe a couple pounds going to aluminum intercooler pipes. once this cat-back rots out again i'll look into building and aluminum cat-back.

major weight savings so far are:
jdm front and back bumpers
abs delete
sunroof delete
manual belts
89 glove box/column cover
fiberglass trunk
fiberglass hood
all emissions equipemnt delete
sound deadning removal
ultra light FD 16x8 wheels
and odds and ends everywhere i found to get weight out.

i would love to one day reworks the rear of the car to take a evo style rear without the subframe, that's gotta save like 50 pounds as well.

working on getting aluminum motor mounts made, but my friend is being a slackass

 

[NateCrisman]

Sweet. I love weight loss posts. Keep them coming.

 

Luke, I would like to compare both my car and yours when I finally get it back together. I think mine should be fairly light as well.... aside from the trunk and hood I think I may have a bit more taken out.

 

[bazeng]

Good job!

Dry ice is the way for sure!

Clean and easy, although the co2 doesn't help....... Just make sure its out in the open.

 

[NateCrisman]

I wonder if getting a couple co2 bottles from walmart's paintball section could work the same as dry ice for this?

 

[gtluke]

don't forget my 50 pounds of rust weightloss /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[4thStroke]

Put me in the seat, I only weigh 135lbs. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[blacksheep]

Luke - just curious, why remove sound deadening and add POR-15? Isnt it kinda thick and heavy - I havent used it so I am asking - Or are you addressing some sort of rust issue...

Also, pics of your sunroof delete, please /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[NateCrisman]

Ditto on the sunroof delete pics. What did you replace the glass with?

 

[blacksheep]

Nate, I did this on my Evo and used aluminium sheet which I had paint matched and attached to car with double sided tape and then allen screws and nuts...Looked OK. The car had lots of allen screws on diffuser, splitter, canards etc - so it matched. Here is a pic you can kinda see it in....Sorry to whore your thread, Luke!

 

[gtluke]

I think I forgot to take pics of the sunroof delete, but basically I took the glass out of the assembly and welded/bolted brackets into the roof. the sunroof has 4 studs that held it into the assembly so they are bolted to that. I had to silicone the living crap out of it though, it leaked water from the gasket to body fitment, as well as the glass to gasket (took me a while to figure that out, it leaks through the inside of the factory gasket/ weather stripping). The sunroof drip pan thing is gone now so any leaks come right onto the headliner. I have it sealed good now though.

Oh and the POR-15 is just paint, it's not thick or heavy. I think I'll be under 12oz to do the floor, and i'm sure it dries less than half that weight.
NJ = rust, all those welds would rust pretty much overnight if I didn't seal them with something.

 

[NateCrisman]

So you removed the motor and brackets, but left the glass. hrm. What did the glass weight vs the stuff you ditched?

I was kinda thinking of sunroof delete using a sheetmetal blank, then covering the roof with a vinyl sheet that would seal it up pretty well.

Then using a non sunroof headliner, mirror, and ceiling lights.

 

[gtluke]

the whole assembly i removed weighs over 40 pounds. it comes down all in one piece out of the ceiling, it just unbolts but the glass comes with it. you have to disassemble the thing to get the glass out and then figure out how to stick the glass back up. i wanted the glass because i keep my bike's on the roof and want to be able to keep an eye on them on the highway just in case.
if you are going to cover it in metal, just get a galant roof skin. a bunch of guys on here did it. because we have those roof rails there is no blending into the a or c pillars. just drill out the spotwelds and lift the skin off and replace it.
if you are going to do a non sunroof headliner, find one from an 87-89 and do the belts at the same time. with the manual belt conversion the headliner needs to be changed also since you gain like 3" of space above the doors on both sides, the headliner needs to be wider.

find an 87-89 non sunroof parts car, that's the best way to do it. do the whole thing in one shot.

 

[curtis]

Quoting blacksheep:
Nate, I did this on my Evo and used aluminium sheet which I had paint matched and attached to car with double sided tape and then allen screws and nuts...Looked OK. The car had lots of allen screws on diffuser, splitter, canards etc - so it matched. Here is a pic you can kinda see it in....Sorry to whore your thread, Luke!

All that work on that EVO and it goes down the road with one tire up in the air. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[steve]

Thats cuz of the canards. Seconds after that photo was taken the car actually took off to 30,000 ft.