Well, I have a 85 Z28 that Im building to be a street legal drag car. Im also 17 and working on a rather tight budget. The 85 is going to be receiving a budget stroker 383 (Getting it machined by a family friend for $1500).

Im going to pull off the door panels, and the back seat, and the plastic crap from the trunk, the headliner, and then the plastic pieces on either side of the back seat, and possibly the carpet.

Is there any pieces I should be careful removing? I plan to keep the center console, so I need to remove it without breaking it, and I dont know what holds it in.

If any one has done this and could show some pictures it would be awesome

 

feel free to thrash away with the interior. i'm doing the same with my street 92, but i didn't keep the console. it comes out pretty easy once you pull the lower dash plate off from under the steering wheel, as long as your car is the same as mine... still learing the nuances of the different years; this is my first 3rd gen.

 

Well, its my second, but Im still such a newby with all this stuff, I dont want to mess up...

 

steel, there are a few torx screws on the top of the console, unscrew them and the top plate comes off, allowing you to remove the bolts holding the lower bit in.

 

Dont forget the 2 under the center console lid.

 

I feel kinda dumb now...

Thanks man!

 

if you're on a tight budget with a drag car, you probably aren't at the point where the small reduction in weight will make enough difference to justify the uglification of your interior. Also, won't you look silly next to the guy that has a full interior and blows your doors off at the track? If you aren't really fast, having a gutted interior isn't really cool.

 

That makes alot of sense actually....

 

Yeah, don't do it. It's really stupid for a street driven car unless you like interior noise, no comfort, and looking like a total jackass. Sorta reminds me of the civic at the strip that removed EVERYTHING at the track, rear seats, floor mats, spare tire, etc. Looked like a swap meet.

But seriously, consider the weight you're saving, maybe you'll net .1 off of the entire interior. Is it worth it?

 

don't do it...it looks stupid unless you are crazy fast. My buddy is putting his back in because he couldn't stand it anymore, and the road noise bugged the hell out of him.

 

What jeremy said; Dont really need to do it. Actually the interior in these cars dont weigh enough to even consider gutting. Alot of the serious racer guys in here even run full interiors, because there isnt much there. Unfortunately, these cars were built cheap, and so they are about as light as they can be, so to reduce weight, you will have to spend $$ on fiberglass parts. Some stuff can simply be removed, but its not much weight savings.

Do you ever plan to have passengers? Do you have a roll cage? If you still want to gut the interior, i have some tips for you, but places you want to concentrate are stuff like;

1) Reducing static weight
2) Reducing dynamic weight

1)
-EDIT: Remove or replace stuff like the hatch. (alot of glass, weighs nearly 100lbs).
-Get a fiberglass hood.
-Remove power windows and lock assemblies, if so equipped.
-Remove AC, and all related pumps and piping.
-Swap over to a manual steering box.
-Relocate battery to trunk. (some argue that the added weight of wires, cancels this mod out. Someone posted a thread about a rather expensive, but super light battery that goes in the front, loses 20 lbs).
-Remove front stabilizer bar. (unless you like taking turns hard, or autocross).
-Get skinnies and fatties tires. Something like prostars, where the wheel is light.
-Consider getting a manual transmission.
-Try to find an aluminum front bumper, rather than the steel one.
-Remove spare tire and jack.
-Remove carpet and insulation. (the insulation is the bulk of the weight). But this makes for a real noisy, fumy, and hot car.
-If youre going with a carbureted 383, remove any old sensors or relays, or wiring that is no longer in use.

2) Dynamic weight, this is stuff that rotates, generally. The weight is multiplied when something spins, because of inertia.
-Get aluminum engine parts.
-Aluminum drive shaft.

 

Hatch isnt even half that, lexan is lighter but weathers quickly. Not a great street mod. You also have to think about where youre removing the weight from. If your too light in the rear all youll do is spin

Bolt on glass hoods save maybe 15lbs. Worth the money? Up to you

Although the manual steering box may be lighter, be sure you know what your in for without power steering

Remove the front/rear sway bars. These do almost nothing for a drag car, but severely reduce your handling on the street

Fatties n skinnies, worry more about weight than thickness
Also get a second set of wheels to mount drag only tires on
Drag radials wear out too fast to use them everyday

Manual transmissions are lighter, have less power loss, and usually more aftermarket parts, but ball to the wall... theres no man alive that can shift faster than an automatic

The aluminum bumper is the actual bumper support. Sometimes you find these in junk yards but they are pennies on the dollar weight savings

The factory GM carpet is rubber backed and very heavy. Get a cheapo carpet set as they will never have this backing or much of any insulation



For a street setup I would keep the weight reduction to a minimum until the engine is built up
Once youre tearin up the track you can play the "Do I need this part" game

 

lol dont listen to these guys!!!

first summer (17 years old) i had my camaro i got sick of being a taxi after about a month of it being on the road. Pulled the back seats out and sold them for 50 bucks.

ill take pics tmw i gutted the whole back of the car. figured got no seats there and its getting a cage anyways so might as well gut everything. Ya its freaking noisy but road noise doesnt bother me one bit. leaving the carpet in helps keep it a lot quieter.

youre obviously planning on putting either a 6 point or 10 point cage in the car depending on how fast you'll be running.
plans for my car including sanding down all of the seam filler, and welding all of the joints in the body. Once this is done smooth everything and cut all of the extra brackets out of the way. Paint the whole inner shell of the car a flat grey/metal colour just to clean everything up.
then install cage.

i would sugest tho that you leave the door panels on, if youre going to be driving it every day its nice to have arm rests.
still havent made up my mind on wether to remove the headliner or not.

when you pull out the back seats, there is a very large torx bolt that goes through the floor to hold the seatbelt buckle, either put that bolt back in or weld the hole up. i didnt think and lost the bolt, the most annoying road noise i find comes out of there

 

how did you get this:
From this:

???

 

Hatch isnt even half that, lexan is lighter but weathers quickly. Not a great street mod. You also have to think about where youre removing the weight from. If your too light in the rear all youll do is spin

Your right, its nearly 100lb (typo) with the spoiler, i edited my post.

Bolt on glass hoods save maybe 15lbs. Worth the money? Up to you

I find that hard to beleive. Do you have quantifiable results? Judging by a stock Z/28 hood, and the factory "fiberglass" one, it felt like WAY more than a 15lb difference.

Although the manual steering box may be lighter, be sure you know what your in for without power steering

Box is lighter, dont forget you elimnate pump, and plumbing too. Definately not ideal for parallel parking.

Remove the front/rear sway bars. These do almost nothing for a drag car, but severely reduce your handling on the street

Give me a break, those things are rediculously heavy. Our cars are very nose heavy, thats a good 30-40 lbs off the front.

Fatties n skinnies, worry more about weight than thickness
Also get a second set of wheels to mount drag only tires on
Drag radials wear out too fast to use them everyday

Well yes, obviously a skinnier tire of a certain material is alot lighter than a fat one. But you need the footprint in the back to hook.

Manual transmissions are lighter, have less power loss, and usually more aftermarket parts, but ball to the wall... theres no man alive that can shift faster than an automatic

Ever heard of D-ick Landy? Or what about this guy? (why is it censoring his name?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHGaYVL9LWo

The aluminum bumper is the actual bumper support. Sometimes you find these in junk yards but they are pennies on the dollar weight savings

The factory GM carpet is rubber backed and very heavy. Get a cheapo carpet set as they will never have this backing or much of any insulation

If eliminating carpet, i would recommend rocker guard. Its a spray on thing, thats intended to be a truck bed liner. Works well, and looks good on interior.



For a street setup I would keep the weight reduction to a minimum until the engine is built up
Once youre tearin up the track you can play the "Do I need this part" game

Agreed

 

sorry my mistake, i thought you needed a 6 point cage for running faster then 12.5 but i realize its 11.5 now, thats a little different.

i wouldnt gut your interior unless you are planning on putting a 6 point in it. That was my justification for pulling it out.

 

I would still like to see the pictures of how it looks with the rear interior out. I don't mind road noise, I never have the tops on any way....

 

There's no way the front sway bar weighs 40 pounds. 20 maybe. There are threads of what everything weighs including hoods, more searching and less estimating?

 

theres a huuuge difference between outside road noise, and under the car road noise. its kind of like a constant droning, you hear the tranny/ds/rear end a lot more. However if youre like me and are putting rod ends or poly bushings on every suspension component you can find, then these things dont bother you.

ill snap some pictures of it tommorow with and without the rear carpet in.

id say the biggest point is if youre planning on putting a cage in or not. If you are to gut it is no big deal. but if theres no bars going back there then there is absolutly no reason to pull the interior out.

 

Steel, you may be interested in losing ALL of your carpet then. Myfreind own a 1938 custom rod, that isnt done its interior yet. So for the time being, he sprayed it, and the trunk with rockerguard from 3M. Its basically an undercoating, but it has a "hard" finish, and its meant to be a spray truck bed liner. It looks nice, kind of like a supercar with no carpets. Looks like this when finished, and dries to a semi-gloss to flat look.

http://www.classicjaguar.com/080205pn1.jpg

If you have an auto, you can probably get a small truck style shifter and boot, but, you would need a real leather boot if you have a manual. For your console.

As for the headliner, and various panels, like doors, maybe you could fabricate something out of vynil, or light durable fabric, and stretch it over the doors and roof to make it look decent.

 

You may not want to remove all the interior of your car...honestly for a street strip car its not going to make much of a difference. Removing seats is probably the best and easiest thing and can before you go to the track. other than that your looking at not much more weight. Theres much more you can do to decrease your times than removing a headliner or door panels. If its cheap go-fast your looking for, why not consider a small shot from the bottle? Thatll move you a lot faster than removing sway bars or carpet...after it all it is a street car

 

i ripped out my entire interior and threw everything in the dumpster. light weight was my excuse, but the real reason was that it was a $300 car and the interior was thrashed. it's cheaper to pull all the panels out and spray it with rhinoliner than replace it all with new parts.

it's your car, steel. build it your way.

 

i say wait till you have a rockin engine.
Tahts what im doing.
im going to remove the seats and everything like that. but i want to keep the interior looking good.
so im just going to throw out all the crap. and add lighter stuff.
make it look better then showing bare metal. id even cover it with a thin layer of fabric you get at the fabric store or something lol.

 

First. Congrats on being a 17 year old into thirdgens! Im in the exact same boat! (17, ive got an iroc-z).

I had all the same intentions you have now at the start of my iroc project, then things took a turn for the worst (so my bank book tells me), decided i wanted a custom interior, new paint etc etc etc.

Anyway. With my experience in removing and installing interiors, ill say this firstall. Doorpanels weight next to nothing, their a sheet of cardboard with fabric on the front, same for the headliner. The console, mine atleast, was 2 10mm screws inside the console bucket peice, and 1 12mm if i remember corectly that attached it to the tranny tunnel.

The carpet, is rediculously heavy. If you want to make it into a decent looking, street drivable car, id advise dumping the stock carpet, the oem padding **** and rubber backside make it SUPER heavy. I have seen a few people lay down the same fabric used to cover Subboxes, this stuff is super light.

Next. If you have no future intentions of things like rear seats etc, you can shave a few pounds by busting out the angle grinder with a cutoff wheel and removing some brackets that are un needed.

With personal experience of moving around hoods, the Fibreglass Z28 hood is a hell of alot lighter then the iroc/Z28 hood. Im guessing 20- 25lbs.

I removed A/C and that stuff from my engine bay, not only cleaned it up, also shaved about 20lbs (i weighed it). Get rid of the emissions stuff and whatnot if your state laws allow.

Last thing, if you have T-tops, ive heard the lexan ones are lighter. Also, if you have T-tops, i reccoment atleast SFC's , and a 8pt. cage to stiffen the chassis. And if oyu intened on getting to a decent ET, that will be required.

Good luck!

Oh, and make sure you read everything online170 says. He seems to know his stuff!

 

Thats funny.

 

I removed all of my interior this weekend. My interior was in pretty good shape except my headliner. For me it wasn't about looks, it was about making the car go faster without spending a dime. Is not a daily driver for me tho, i drive it on saturdays, thats about it, so road noise and such don't bother me one bit.
I pulled all the interior except the center console and weighed everything.
The weight i came up with after adding it all up was 209lbs, that includes the spare tire, jack, brackets for it, the amp that never worked, and all 4 speakers that never worked (blown due to amp i think).
It did make a seat of the pants difference, I'm happy with it, but thats just me.

 

209lbs is pretty significant. Could you please list exactly what you removed? You must have written it down if u weighed them, if its not too much trouble, id like to know. Thanks.

 

Im in indy right now, and the car is in south bend, hence why i only drive it on weekends. I have the pile of stuff laying in my garage, the only thing that isnt there is the amp which i sold. When im home on friday or saturday ill definatly post a list of stuff, or just take a pic of it all laying out, or even weights if you want.

 

If it doesnt work trash the A/C. With the cond that alot of weight there.

 

Cool thanks. That would be awesome if you could post the weights. If you sold/got rid of one item, thats simple, you just add the difference between the weight u come up with and 209 for the weight of the amp.

 

I say go for it if you like it do it. I did it to my 89 rs and i still have front carpet and door panels. and got a 4in cowl hood lift off fiberglass. I think for a 305 it was a big difference than having everything in it. When i had everything in friends were like "Oh you can fit all three of us in it" then they want to see how fast it is and you have a extra 500lbs in it. Take it all out and you and one other person can only drive in it.

 

I was really busy this weekend, i had to go to ft wayne so i didnt have time to weigh things and get any pics up. Ill go ahead and just tell you what i removed, All the plastic panels from from front to back, including door panels, and the plastic around the doors, i removed the plastic on the dash down by the feet area. I removed the rear speakers, and the amp, but i put the fronts back in, they acctually work. All of the carpeting and sound deadening and carpeting is gone, most of it was soaked, i had to replace my heater core about 3 or 4 weeks ago because it was leaking so bad, so the front was pretty drenched, and the rear was wet from my T tops leaking. The rear seatbelts are gone, and the rear seats of course. I forgot that i also included the AC evaporator in the weight, wich was 5lbs if i remember right, so you can take that off the weight. The spare tire, jack, and everything else that would come off back there.
Thats about it, I dont remember anything else, i weighed it using a normal scale, not a digital one or anything, i weigh 150 one the dot, so to weigh the things i just picked them up and looked at how much the scale moved.

 

Was this stuff still wet when you weighed it? Sounds like alot for what you listed. The carpet and sound deadening is probably the bulk of the weight, but im skeptical about whether the plastic really weighs a significant amount. MAYBE 20 lbs at most?

 

yeah the stuff was still wet. Im not sure how much the plastic added up to, i help alot of things together, so im not sure on specific weights. I weighed alot of little things too, that most people probably wouldnt bother with, my thick gauge amp cable, all the wiring from the speakers and the amp, there was quite a bit extra. My friend before me kind of rigged things, so there was all kinds of cable coiled up and zip tied to things. That added on another couple lbs. But yes the carpet was definatly the bulk of the weight.