You guys are defeating the purpose of having a Lexus/street car by removing creature comforts. I personally think that's crazy. Just add a few lbs of boost if you are worried about 100lbs.

Steve K.

 

You have your reason for building yours, we have our reasons as well and they are different.

 

SC Benny is a little more extreme than most. BTW, would like to see your roof when your done redoing it.

 

Random data point here, but I weighed the pass. door at exactly 60.0 lbs (balanced upright on the scale, waiting for it to stabilize), without speaker, door card, glass/rails/actuator, inner or outer trim, weatherstrip, mirror, wiring, but with the hefty hinge still attached. Without weighing those other pieces, I realize it's fairly useless info. There's not much that can be done to minimize weight there on a street car, but you can definitely see the savings potential if going dune buggy.

Edit: A hinge sans bolts = 12 lb 2 oz. I was semi-thinking of a stripped down passenger door with bolted in plexiglass window, since I don't run a pass. seat and will likely be ditching the mirror, but the hinge is such a discouragingly large chunk of the door's weight, there's not as much to be saved there as I had hoped.

 

Thats a serious idea.

 

Go big or go home.

It's a spare door, so I may just toy around with it at my leisure... See how much of the inner sheet metal can be cut away without the need for window actuator and door card mounts. Shape the remaining inner sheet metal around the speaker enclosure and inner handle. (Shouldn't need anything left behind around the lock mechanism.) Figure out a way to reuse the window rails with a piece of plexiglass and outer trim. Add a trim piece to cover up the mirror mount. (I've got a new mirror arriving this week that I'll be testing an A-pillar mount with.) Etc., etc.

If I go ahead with it and don't like it, worst case scenario is having to pull the wiring loom through again. I'd rate that a medium on the PITA scale. Plus ~$40 for the plexiglass, of course. Taking the first door off, I was a bit surprised at the weight and it almost took me down with it... I got smart on the second door and supported both ends with jack stands. That made it a piece of cake. So, the actual swapping of doors isn't a deterrent to possibly trying this out. The major downside is the spare door is the wrong color, which would make my SC look like a VW.

 

12 pounds for the hinge? Dang, I guess I need to figure out some type of cheap hinge since my doors are totally stripped. They do make for good conversation at the track during tech however, but a 24 pound weight reduction may be worth it. I could just pin the passenger door, maybe come up with a way to fold part of the driver door down for entry and over the top bar of the roll cage.

 

It was rather alarming how much easier the door was to lift after removing the hinge. That's 20% of the weight!

Adding stuff up in my head, without having weighed several of the individual pieces as yet, I'm thinking there's ~30 lbs of stuff I had already taken off the door, putting it in the neighborhood of 90 lbs total. 10 lbs glass, 10 lbs door card, 3 lbs window actuator, 3 lbs trim, 2 lbs mirror, 2 lbs speaker, 1 lb wire ... give or take.

 

CF door hinges, new product!

 

When you've just about run out of ideas, here's literally one more ounce that can be shaved:





I was cleaning up the black e-brake prior to swapping it in and thought, there sure is overkill to its design... You could probably take out the second horizontal bridge above the part I removed, with no ill effect, but that space is a little tougher to get to without nicking other stuff. And trim down the perimeter some for perhaps 3 oz total.

That's insanely heavy gauge steel for how little it really has to do. It's basically as stout as the tie-down hooks.

p.s. Going back to the door hinges, here's one you might want to be sitting down for. A single door hinge weighs almost 10% more than the dash! (Not counting the airbag.)

 

Here's a somewhat surprising one. I'm swapping a '97 dash into my '94 and figured I might as well weigh the before & after. The newer dash actually weighs 9 oz less. The newer airbag is an additional 7 oz lighter, making the total exactly 1 lb.

I believe I accounted for all the possible differences, weighing both with metal backing plates, ducts, wood trim and vents, solar sensors, etc.

 

Here is how the car came out so far, im pretty happy with it, i can defiantly notice a huge difference because of the extensive weight savings

 

Car looks good SCBenny

 

did you weigh the car benny?

what front lip is that? also , what did you do to plug the hole with your sunroof? the sunroof is on my list of things i want out.. or are you just leaving it open

 

SCBenny - looks like you are preparing your car for some type of racing that is why you are trying to get into the 2900 weight ? Which one ... drag , autocross / circuit or drifting ?