Shaving door handles advice for show car

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Jan 12, 2026 | 03:20 PM
  #51  
Re: Shaving door handles advice for show car
Quote: Really late to the discussion
hey when you going to have your car out and about? id still love to see it in person.
there are a couple big shows coming up in just a few weeks, and would be cool to see it..

Quote: My preliminary plan .
i use like 1/4-20 hard ware, drill behind the door seal when possible so you dont see the heads of the bolts. put them down low and its a n easy mounting.
i take the latch out drill a small hole in the linkage and have the popper (solenoid) pull down directly to the latch assembly.
easy peasy.
also like stated above, i run both power and grounds out of the doors and into the car. ground to the inner dash or kcik panle area. other wise if you ground to the car door,
you risk the issue of problems going through the door hinges. Now these 3rd gen doors are heavy so youll probably never have a problem, but when it comes to shaved handles, you want no issues.
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Jan 13, 2026 | 08:45 AM
  #52  
Re: Shaving door handles advice for show car
Thanks for the advice on the grounding. I will for sure be grounding inside the car.
Car is being wired from the ground up, should allow for a clean ground to select from.
Will for sure mount like stated, nice and low and attached directly to the latch. I actually bought new latches just to make sure everything moves smoothly.
After work today I will be stripping both doors of all their paint (and filler), whatever I find.

Then coating it with some zinc phosphate rust converter to hold things over so I can strip the hinge area with some soda over the weekend, before epoxy coating everything.

Still on the fence about side mirrors. Think the car will look a lot more aggressive with something not stock. Thinking maybe these. I brought this up since I want to sort out mounting as I am doing the shaved door handle work.

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Jan 14, 2026 | 08:58 AM
  #53  
Re: Shaving door handles advice for show car
The aftermath of using a surface conditioning tool to strip the doors.
The aftermath of using a surface conditioning tool to strip the doors.
I went down deep enough to remove all the paint and primer. I figured the last bits of bondo don't matter since I will be addikg back to it soon enough.
I went down deep enough to remove all the paint and primer. I figured the last bits of bondo don't matter since I will be addikg back to it soon enough.
Tried showing how coated in dust everything was.
Tried showing how coated in dust everything was.

Going to media blast the hinges area tonight and do a once over to the outer skin with a DA, then wipe them down and spray some epoxy primer to seal everything.

Will worry about stripping the jams at a later stage.
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Jan 14, 2026 | 09:01 AM
  #54  
Re: Shaving door handles advice for show car
Forgot to mention I found a bit of metal pitting that was filled with bondo so it must have been old, like existed when the car got painted last time.

A couple of other dime sized rust areas existed near the bottom to. I will treat those areas with rust converter first. I already sanded down to good metal last night so everything looks like clean metal now.
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Jan 14, 2026 | 10:21 AM
  #55  
Re: Shaving door handles advice for show car
Quote: Forgot to mention I found a bit of metal pitting that was filled with bondo so it must have been old.
there is always fun stuff to find when you get to stripping them down..
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Jan 14, 2026 | 11:52 AM
  #56  
Re: Shaving door handles advice for show car
You can actually see the small area in the first photo. It is between the two GFX holes. It is pretty small. And thr pitting is completely full of bondo. For that specific area, I think a bit of converter for 10 min, pre painting prep, and epoxy primer will be good to go.

As for the side view mirrors, I have decided to get rid of the stock ones and go with the ones shown above.

I will mount them in the stock location. The mouning holes are different obviously so I will weld shut the 3 stock holes and smooth that area out too.

Will do that after I get the main skin in primer.
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Mar 24, 2026 | 09:17 AM
  #57  
Re: Shaving door handles advice for show car
Just a heads up, I am going back to only posting in my main build thread. I got the doors stripped and am getting ready to paint the insides in rust encapsulator tonight. Follow along here if you want

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/memb...ml#post6582037
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