I am building a custom restomod '91 Z28 and am going to be shaving the door handles and locks.
Actually locks are already shaved. Once I get rid of the handles, is there any point in locking the doors anymore? There is nothing to grab.

Car will be primarily used to go to car shows and stuff like that, but again, with nothing to grab why lock the doors?

I do plan on having a master kill switch hidden on the outside, under the car. Good for long term storage and added security I guess.

 

Yes.

It is far safer to have the door locks active/ in the locked-position...
Should a car accident ever occur, the locks will keep the doors closed if the door latches fail.

 

I thought of that too, but to be honest I never lock the doors when driving. At least I haven't in the 21 years of owning the car.

Guess I can keep them, in case I remember to.

 

I removed the door locking mechanism entirely. With a convertible you can break in with a knife, so, how useful are door locks again? The only reason I would keep them is if you were going to put an exterior door popper button in an easy to access location like the cowl area. With the locks and a key fob you could ensure that if someone saw or knew of the location of the door popper button it wouldn't matter because the doors were locked.

 

Hey Tibo, I agree that they are not needed. I have them in the doors already and bought some fancy switches to activate them not thinking about not needing them.
So I guess I will keep them, but TBH I am not every gonna use them.
I will just get electronics needed for the door poppers to activate and that's it.
If I hadn't already made a custom center console to house the fancy billet buttons I would remove them all together.

Thanks for the clear answer and for responding. This site seems to be light on people who modify heavily. Your car is one of maybe 6 that is turned up to 11 like mine will be!

 

FYI I was gonna shave my handles as well. My locks have been done. But they wont let you race at the track without handles if you ever wanna track it. Safety issue.

 

Thanks for the heads up about the track rule. This car is going to be 100% show car and weekend toy sorta thing. I have a C7 Vette if I ever want to hit a track.

Would love to do C7 style door handles but I think it would take away from the super smooth shaved look.

 

I've often thought of taking the C7 door handle design idea. My idea was to do a pocket or rather cut away at the back of the door and stick a GM electric trunk release (like from a Cadillac) in it. I pretty sure I read in the IHRA rules that shaved door handles are allowed so long as the windows were down amd there was something obvious that could be pulled if the door needed pulled from the outside. I'm nearly positive I read some small section like that.

 

Very interesting about the shaved rule if it is true. Not sure it really applies to me since I don't currently plan on racing the car when it is done, but you never know what the future holds.
If you do the Cadillac popper idea, please share pics of how. Would be great to follow along.
I am going to have a mechanical lever on the inside of the door still to open from the inside. Not a button like on my C7 (it has an emergency lever on the floor if the battery dies).

Does anyone know if there is a "better" shaved door handle kit out there? To me they all seem really cheap. I have some 50lb. solenoids already from when I tried to do this in college 10+ years ago. So think those will be just fine.
Just need the wireless transmitter part to make them pop open. All the kits I find for this have like 9 functions with tons of buttons. I am looking for something with 2 buttons. Driver side open, passenger side open. That's it.
I like popping the trunk with the key.