How much do our doors weigh?

Somehow random memory recall is telling me that our doors weigh about 200 pounds each but in reality I have no idea. Can someone tell me how much they weigh? I'm just curious

Thanks

They weigh about 120 to 150lbs.You can remove about 25 to 30 lbs off that weight by removing the inner impact bars.
The impact bars are about 54" in length and weigh about 12 to 15lbs each.
The inner door panels weigh about 20 to 23 lbs.
Take the 2 panels out @ say 45 lbs plus the 2 impact bars @ 30lbs = a weight savings of about 80 or so lbs.You can make a functioning door panels out of sheet alu with super thin padding and attach all the power features.
Fabricate and be happy  

Having been T-boned in my Riviera driver door, twice. There's no way I'd remove the side door impact beams. Track cars add reinforcement in this area, because cabin intrusion is a nasty thing. Don't be that guy...

I like the idea of pulling the interior panels off, though. Would make finding those window rattles much easier!

I wouldn't ever remove the impact beams myself. I was thinking of if I ever get good enough at fiber composite molding that I might make carbon fiber doors to save a lot of weight. I have 3 of these cars two of which aren't road worthy but I had big plans some day for restoring my old TFB. I know for a fact carbon fiber has incredible torsion strength and tensile strength compared to steel but I don't know if it will compromise the chassis. Also I would want to cut out some of the frame later on Truck F--ked buick if I did custom door molds and make the front doors smaller, while also doing reverse hinge hidden doors in the back like the RX7 has and many small cab 4 door pickups to solve the problem of doors being way too big and to give rear passengers more loading space. That's for like a 5 year later plan by the way.

My plan for molding the doors? Use an X box kinect hooked up to a computer as a 3rd model scanning tool of a disassembled door on both sides. I would cut them apart if I had to along the seams.

http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/diy-3d-scannning-microsoft-kinect-81650.html

As you can see there, I can utilize that method and cad software to make a perfect digital mold and reshape it how I want then either pay a company to print a 3d mold or possibly use it as a tool to easier make my own mold, but it would be figured out digitally before I cut into the car.

I should probably mention that crazy stuff will only happen after I graduate from college lol. The hope is to be a mechanical engineer.

Then get a cad certificate, extensive welding certificate focused on TIG welding, extensive fiber composite fabrication experience, extensive metal working and milling experience with cnc machining, then I'll probably go for all the school I'd need to also have an associates in automotive technology.

The goal is to eventually get 20 years+ of extensive fabrication, and engineering experience in somehow less time than it would take someone normally.

Keep in mind I'm only some 23 year old kid right now but one of the things I wanna do is take the riviera as far as it will go and do the rights of what the GM engineers did wrong. It's an extensive plan I have so far and only about 40% worked out but if it's actually possible for a 10 pound carbon fiber door to be as strong as a 130 pound one then it's definitely something I need to do on the later project car.

Probably sounds ridiculous reading that for you guys lol

I think it makes perfect sense. It's a bit ambitious, but what's life without ambition? I might take your Kinect idea to image the whole exterior and then get it printed out in 1/10th scale or something. Maybe even make an RC body for the spare chassis I have laying around.

Make the door skin and internal panels from carbon, but keep the steel beam for rigid structural support. Most cars that do carbon panels still have a steel space frame, or aluminum chassis at least. The exception being a carbon monocoque, in which case you would not have doors!

I was considering a possible honeycomb structure inside basically resin welding it to both sides of the panel but I wouldn't mind keeping the steel beam either. So basically I could save about 200 pounds or more going carbon fiber doors and even more weight savings if I make double mini suicide does for the back. Always wished our car had those lol.

Anyway I got some insane stuff planning ideas lol.

I'll make a post about the structure of our doors with detailed pics when I eventually start planning that mod more in depth! I like helping out other riv guys lol

c0reyl wrote:

Keep in mind I'm only some 23 year old kid right now but one of the things I wanna do is take the riviera as far as it will go and do the rights of what the GM engineers did wrong.

So you're going to make it rear wheel drive?




Yeah, was just commenting to my son the other day as we got out of the car, man sometimes I forget how heavy these doors are. I wonder what they weigh? They really are beasts, but solid. How many ~20 year old car doors are this rattle free after a million door slams, and generally hang straight?

Lol you caught me.

Actually I never would have bothered if I didn't chew on it for so long. Something that inspired me was reading this:

"The G-body had an extremely resilient structure. For its time, the G-body was one of the strongest unibody car frames in production (25 Hz). This fact did not go untouted as GM literature made light of the need to use a 'frame crusher' designed to test heavy-duty truck frames to finally break the G-body structure in their crush-to-failure procedures."

Apparently the c6 vette  is also 25Hz  lol

I always wanted to do something outrageous no one ever did before to a car. I decided that the best example I've seen so far was John  Henessey. This guy used to basically Turbo cars to outrageous horsepower numbers in a shed,  then he got the bright idea of getting a lotus exige,extending the chassis some 17 inches, dropping in an ls9 corvette engine twin turbo'd to 1200 horses hooked up to a (getrag?) Ford GT tranny is the basics of what he did but it was far more involved.


Anyway it would be at least 5 years in the future but I've been toying with the idea of getting a 3800 fbody donor car, gutting out some of the bottom of my truck F--ked  buick, weld in bottom frame reinforcements, fully build a race engine out of a Camaro  3800 and have a mild twin charged 400 horse daily driver with a boost controller to easily give 600 horses know that special occasion.

I'd need the wire harness, cumputers  and all that from the f-body.

Then the plan would be to custom mount k members to the reinforced frame, figure put torque arm placement, mount in a t56 magnum transmission, use an aluminum flywheel and the rear suspension as well as the drive shaft from a current model cts  very Cadillac which was designed exactly for the type of load forces of this application and has a wheelbase less than an inch longer meaning it makes it extremely easy comparitively  to mount the tranny  and drive shaft. I'd have to gut out some of the frame and reinforce, cut out the transmission tunnel from the f-body and place it well. Might need a lot of fabrication for placement and shift patterns but I'd wanna get that perfect.  I'd need to figure out a way to get the clutch pedal in and clutch hooked up which would be the strongest clutch a 3800 fbody has. Hopefully the engine would hook up to the t56 magnum. Hopefully by the time I graduate and have money there's gunna  be cheap salvaged eBay parts for these like they have on the 2007-2009 models.

Front suspension: not entirely figured out yet what I wanna do.

I do realize if I try to fan the rear suspension in that it would need to be extremely  lrecise with fitment and angle of everything to take advantage of how the donor rear suspension was intended to work but it should be an easier fit than most.

And that's mostly what I have on that idea so far lol but I figure maybe a little over 20 grand years later into the parts car would be way more awesome than being in debt to own a caddy or some other new stupid luxury car. So basically I have some stuff a little feasibly figured out.

Then again maybe I'll find out its not as feasible as I thought and I'll be back to square one which is simply buy a 370z nismo by then lol.

I'm curious to see how outlandish you guys will think of that lol.

Edit: there's a lot of little details here and there missing but I did type that on my phone in a hurry lol.

Actually just ordered a new rear transmission mount, and the riv gets a 4 wheel alignment and rotated tires before I drive it to Michigan

And to save space on the forum:

Tell me if you'd rather make new post about it and I'll edit it out but; I saw a lot of grease come out of the m90 snout a while ago and it has marble sound in the intake and at least a little play on the snout feeling it by hand. I wanna do a rebuild on it but anyone know the best kit to get? I saw a kit on ebay for 55 bucks but I'm guessing parts aren't the best and I might also do a modular pulley system but not for sure I'd I'm rebuilding the snout. Michigan temps will help with that pulley drop lol

Edit again: forgot to mention the driveshaft would probably take the place of the current exhaust so I'd need to re fabricate the exhaust, and some other stuff I still forgot lol its been busy trying to get my car ready for college in Michigan which is a thousand miles from home.

I was looking into a cool universal ECU setup which had some really cool options like way more tuning options, supports universal gage clusters and obd2 readers, almost all engine Sensors..displayed diagnostic waveforms like an oscilloscope I believe, has a headphone jack to actually listen to the engine knock.. it was really cool.

I wish they had a universal ECU that used a system similar to a pharum I think it's called that changes note pitch based on distance that sent an audio frequency to a preamp that sent the signal to transistors to act as a switch to both spark the engine and to some mosfets that could pulse the injectors as the same exact time that didn't need to pulse. I believe it has a potential to eliminate a separate timing advance system as well if controlled by say a tegra k1 dev kit. It would automatically know the timing advance then the throttle would be the timing advance itself?

Also diagnostics would be far better because you'd be able to read the preamp signal itself with an oscilloscope and see everything working and know what the problem was within a minute if spark was messed up or injectors, eliminating the need for pulsing ground.

I think it could also save a little power as that setup, putting less load on alternators and reducing a tiny bit of parasitic loss.

Just my 2 cents on that subject but yeah maybe that belongs in the concept discussion threads.

help!
It is winter here in western New York. I am a happy Firefighter in any kind of snow depth.
MY question
I have read where my Buick Riviera SC 3800 has FOUR (4) wheel traction control??
How can this be??
It is a front wheel drive vehicle.
Firefighter

Paris, how on earth did you end up in the "how much do our doors weigh" thread?

No, it does NOT have 4 wheel traction control. It has 4 wheel ABS with no active stability system. Only the front wheels are traction "controlled".