Before - quite a comfortable and clean interior, but it was looking it's
age and a bit drab. Can you really love Grey plastic tat? Plus it's all nasty weight.
The rear seats were soon gone, followed by the seatbelts, speakers, plastic trim,
and side panels. As each bit was removed it was weighed.
There's around 40Kg of plastic in the trailer. That's 4% of the car's weight. So that's
a 4% improvement in acceleration and braking then. The wiring loom was then
unwrapped. Numerous unused connectors and wires were discovered. About 1KG of
superfluous wiring was removed at the first attempt and it is estimated that
another 2-3Kg of wiring remains to be culled.
Once most of the loom had been unwound it was found that there were only two wires constraining
it to its position near the driver's foot. Therefore it was moved to the passenger
side of the car. This meant that all of the connecting wires could be shortened.
Slowly
the wiring was rearranged, with regular checks that everything still functioned.
It was a slow process with the Haynes manual studied throughout so that the
workings of the circuits was understood. All stripped wires were placed in a box
ready for a weigh in at the end.
The
weight loss program slowly proceeded with time. My initial fears that I would
find it too noisy or uncomfortable were unfounded. In fact I loved it. The
increase in acceleration was very noticeable.
The
electric windows winders were replaced with manual items. The motors weighed in
at about 1Kg each. 
The
window and mirror loom was then removed. The electric mirrors were kept, but all
wiring was removed. It's all very well having toys, but weight is the enemy. Do
I reall need motors to change the mirrors when I can reach them anyway?
The headlamp wiring loom was exposed for surgery.
The front fog lamp loom was removed. The rear trailer loom was also binned. The second horn and relay were removed.
The
"box o' shite" was filling nicely by now. Bear in mind that the picture shows
compressed wires. The weight is around 5Kg.
I took the opportunity to do some remedial rust work.
The
dash fixing brackets had their spot welds drilled out before they were
sent down to the unnecessary weight centre.
I
started on removing the sound proof matting at this time. I tried a variety of
techniques. The blow torch tended to make a lot of smoke. I found a hot air gun
to be better, but it was still a load of hassle scraping the molten bitumen off.
I tried some lethal solvents (Cellulose thinners, aka Toleune etc) which did
seem to soften the remnants. However, it appeared that a wire brush on the end
of a drill was slow but sure in removing the remnants. This worked better if
they hadn't been softened.
I
found that for £15 I could buy a 12v ceramic heater. So I removed the heater
matrix. It weighed 4Kg and the fan another 1.5Kg.
I
did a Paul Daniels on the sunroof - cutting off the half that it slid into. That
removed 8Kg out of the 16Kg total.
The original tilt and slide sun roof weighed in at 16Kg. The Paul Daniels conversion left 8Kg. When the roll cage was fitted I had to remove more of the sun roof. With some of this missing then the roof started to leak. They are not waterproof. Instead they rely on a gutter system.
I replaced the whole unit with a piece of Lexan. This is top grade Polycarbonate sheet. I used 3mm material, which cost around £48 for a sunroof sized piece. I cut it around 6mm smaller than the hole to give a 3mm gap around it. I fitted the rubber strip that normally goes round the rear hatch glass into the gap. This made the roof vaguely waterproof. The Lexan was held in with some brackets I made out of 3mm Aluminium. I spent a good while bending this up. Most of the brackets bolted into the original sun roof holes. For the rear bracket I enlarged an existing hole in the roof beam and tapped it out to M4.
