FiberGlass doors

[gojo83]

any one on here done the glass door mod to drop weight. I know it is a pricey mod but I am sorta thinking going for a closer to a 50/50 weight split for throwing around in canyons and curvy mountain roads. I know there is other ways like a ls1 swap but I think a old iron setup would be fun to throw around and have fun with. The woman wants a light weight cruiser that can roll the local imports at will so instead of n2o or boost shed some weight and improve the power to weight. I am trading the stock RA hood for a glass RA hood straight across with a buddy so that is covered now just debating whether it is worth doing the doors or not. end goal is a 400-425 hp car with a short throw and stage 2 clutch to go cause trouble in.

[joelster]

Are you talking about a 4th gen? If so, the doors are a composite mix. They are very light as is. There is an 8.5lb door bar on the inside that you can remove. You can remove the door panel and get a carbon fiber door panel from DMH Fabrication ($299). The stock door panel weighs 8lbs and the DMH panel weighs 12 ounces. You can take out the speakers too. They weigh around 2 lbs each. Total weight savings for each door is around 18lbs. You can try to trim some material from behind the door panel if you wish but it's hard to say where it is safe to cut, and still be strong enough to support the window mechanism.

[Phstratton]

For the love of god don't rice out your camaro...just buy a honda instead.

[SexyTransAm]

For the love of god don't rice out your camaro...just buy a honda instead.
i lol'ed

[Bowtie4Life]

given that the only steel exterior parts of fourth gens are the hood and quarter panel/roof, there's not a whole lot of weight savings to be had. If you're wanting to make the car handle better, you would be better off going at the suspension. Tubular k-member, tubular control arms, (if you have the money), will drop some weight off the front, spings and shocks, panhard bar, lower control arms, torque arm, sway bars. All that stuff will help out more than shaving off a few punds here and there with light weight body panels.

[gojo83]

For the love of god don't rice out your camaro...just buy a honda instead.

How do you figure that putting replacement fiberglass parts on a car is ricing it out? If you even knew me you would know that all my work is nothing rice at all. I am just looking for ways to drop weight and make the car more fun to throw around and drive in general. If i were going to rice anything it would be a sti that would be dewinged to a standard wrx wing so that you would catch ppl by surprise.

I also never knew that a better power to weight ratio was ricing something out... you learn something every day

[joelster]

How do you figure that putting replacement fiberglass parts on a car is ricing it out? If you even knew me you would know that all my work is nothing rice at all. I am just looking for ways to drop weight and make the car more fun to throw around and drive in general. If i were going to rice anything it would be a sti that would be dewinged to a standard wrx wing so that you would catch ppl by surprise.

I also never knew that a better power to weight ratio was ricing something out... you learn something every day

Taking weight out of a car by replacing parts with lighter parts is not "ricing" your car out at all. Like I said before, our doors are fairly light as is, but you can get almost 20lbs out of them by swapping panels and removing the door bars and speakers. That's almost 40lbs total. If you take off the front fenders there is around 7-8lbs of unecessary metal that you can cut away from each side. The metal is there to provide support for the fenders' shape, but you will see that the fenders need no support, they are quite stiff as is. The rear 1/4's are steel, but there are no replacement panels that I am aware of. You can get a lexan rear hatch for around $400ish and then trim an easy 20-30lbs of metal out of the hatch and roof support area. The lexan itself will save 28lbs over the stock glass. So total for doing everything I just said would cost you around $700 and you'd save 115lbs or so. If you get a cage there is a LOT more metal in the interior that you can remove as well.