Originally Posted by ThePass

So another few days spent working on the car in my spare time...

I've been meaning to lighten the doors for a while now. Lighter = faster, and in the words of Ricky Bobby, "I wanna go fast!!!"

So here's how the doors looked Monday morning:



I began dissasembling things and recalled that back in the day I had added Fatmat to the driver's door to eliminate some rattling from the speakers (it never helped). This was not fun to scrape off:



The passenger side thankfully did not have that. Here it is with aleverything that can be simply unbolted removed:



Then I got out the cutting tools and got to work:



Near the top of the door there are three layers of steel, so I cut up into that and removed as much as I felt I could while keeping the door rigid:



Test-fit the elbow pad and some rubber trim around the cut edge:



But, in the picture above, you can see that there is still a heavy cross-brace that runs through the door. This I cut out as well, but didn't take an in-progress picture of. In the finished pics you can see how it is missing.

Now we get on to the condundrum: how to keep the car streetable with gutted doors??

I wanted to be able to put the glass in place for street driving and so it could be secure when parked, but removeable for competetive use.

Here is the solution being made. The blue tape marked where the top edge of the door sat in relation to the window, so I could adjust these hooks so that the window sits exactly as it did when normally rolled up:



The hooks finished and awaiting paint:



Notches needed to be cut in the rubber on the door where the hooks would sit:



The finished hooks mounted on the window:



The window mounted in the door. It literally just sits in this position quite securely, but I can pull the windows out in 10 seconds. With the door shut, they can't be removed. Totally secure.



Then I painted the inside of the doors and finished them with the elbow pad and rubber trim. The finished product, window in place. I'll be adding a wire that will serve as the interior door latch pull later:



And the passenger door. You'll see that I removed a little more weight with the hole saw in the bottom of the doors:



The doors still have the exterior handle and lock, and the interior door handle will be a wire attached to the front of the door that runs back to the latch at the rear. Just pull on the wire and the door latch pops open.

But wait... how much weight was saved?

I threw everything I had removed in a cardboard box:





Then I remembered that the crossovers for the speakers were still in the footwells, so I removed those, which are easily another half pound together.

So, total weight pulled from both doors: 52.5 lbs

I then went through the car and pulled out all of the speaker wire and amplifier wiring, and weighed that with the amplifier that I removed: 12 lbs

So, total weight saved: 64.5 lbs

Originally Posted by miata2fast

Is there a reason I can not cut the metal partition between the triangle window and the main window.

If I recall, it bolts to the top of the window sill like the window gliders. It seems like the added length is not necessary since the window is no longer moving up and down. I would cut it just below where it bolts to the sill.

Originally Posted by ThePass

Originally Posted by ThePass

Haha thanks Hustler... the doors were part 1 of a two-part interior lightening project, so the rest of the interior was partially disassembled at that point as well. Now that part 2 has been completed as well, the ECU is happy and cozy in its new home:

Originally Posted by ThePass

Haha thanks Hustler... the doors were part 1 of a two-part interior lightening project, so the rest of the interior was partially disassembled at that point as well. Now that part 2 has been completed as well, the ECU is happy and cozy in its new home:

Originally Posted by ThePass

You can certainly cut the bottom portion off, but it's quite light so it's not much of a difference in weight to leave it so I use that as my door pull handle.