Stripping Doors for Weight Reduction

This is my first Tech type of post on the Forum. For all of you that have wondered about removing the crash supports out of your Maverick in the quest for a lighter weight car, here is what I did.

Disclaimer! The only reason I’m removing the crash supports is to remove weight, this car will never be street driven and will only ever be an off-road car. I would not ever recommend doing this to a street driven car especially once I show you how much the supports really weigh!

I’m building a 77 Maverick 4 door car for bracket drag racing so my goal is to remove as much weight as possible. Currently no one is making fiberglass doors for a 4dr car so I thought I would see how much weight I could get off of the stock doors.

First I removed door panel and all associated parts, then the inside door release, window regulator, glass, weatherstrip, window channel, latch assy and anything else bolted or screwed to the door except the outside door handle( I needed something to hold on to).

Next I located the 4 spot welds on each end of the door that hold the inside support bar to the door. I center punched each spot weld and then used a 3/8 spot weld cutter to drill out the welds. To be honest you can use a drill bit to do the same thing if you like, it just takes longer. Word of caution, if you drill or cut too deep you may possibly drill a hole through the outside of the door!

Once the spot welds are drilled out you can move the support around a little bit to give you better access for the next part of the removal. I tried to think of different ways to remove the support as it won’t come out in one piece or even two pieces on the front doors. I tried an angled air tool with a cut off disc but it would take a while, the supports are surprisingly thick…duh. I decided to use a plasma cutter as we have one where I work.

I took a piece of floor pan, left over from putting new ones in my Fairlane, and slipped it between the door skin and support so it would act as shield when cutting.
We cut the supports up and wiggled the pieces out through the existing holes on the door.

I weighed the supports and was surprised they didn’t weigh more. Front door supports weighs 9 pounds and the rears weighed a little over 5 pounds each. Removing 28 pounds out of the doors is a lot in the big scheme of things for my project. Of course there is always the option of finding early doors and using them in place of the later ones. For me this was not possible as I couldn’t find any doors close by and besides it only took about 5 hours of work to remove the supports and I didn’t have to buy anything except the spot weld cutter for $29.00.

Each front door weigh in at 66 pounds with all parts, including glass, less hinges. Fully stripped they weigh in at 34.2 pounds. I will have to add the latch assy, latch release and a glass substitute, Lexan or Plexi. Hopefully they will weigh in at 40-42 pounds ready to race.

The rear doors weighed 53.4 pounds fully loaded, less hinges. Stripped out they weigh 27.6 pounds each. On the rears I will only have to add the latch assy and some Lexan, I’m leaving the inside door release out of the rear doors. I’m thinking the rear doors will come in at 32-33 pounds each.

Overall I’m shooting for a weight reduction on the doors only, at around 88 pounds.

All in all a kind of fun project and it satisfied my curiosity as to how much the doors and supports weighed.

Kelly

 

More Pictures of Door Supports

 

Nice write up

Back in the early times with my own 70 Maverick, I removed both doors and found them to be pretty bad off so I was in the market for replacements. A guy who runs a small local wrecker business was about to scrap a 75 and told me to come and get the doors before it went to the junk yard. I removed the first door the same way I had on my 70 and I got a big surprise when the weight of the door finally came to light when the last bolt came out. What a big difference in weight from my 70 doors

 

I purchased a 73 comet door and it did not have that huge bar in it. I think that was a safety addition from 74 on up.

Regardless, my right side door is WAY lighter than my left side door.

I have always wanted to lighten the other one up to match.

Thanks for the writeup!!!

 

Up until I think 1973 is when the Feds made Ford reinforce the doors,that`s why the 70 model is 1 of the favorites for drag racing because it`s so light.