I don't know if anyone is interested in these findings, but I thought I would post what I found for others to consider when wanting to shed weight from their mini's.
Yesterday, I decided to tackle taking weight out of the van. I took the benches out of the van many years ago, but never went much further than that until now as far as weight savings go.
At this point, the van will be mainly used for drag racing, but I will drive it to the track (kinda my thing....).
I removed the hatch from the van. The only things that were not present on the van's hatch were the interior panel and the rear wiper and motor. All else was present (speakers, harness, license plate, license plate lights, license plate bezel, washer tubes, glass with rear defrost, center latch and side latches, and lock and latch mechanism.
This hatch weighed 66.8 lbs. as is shown in the pictures.
With the glass, harness, speakers, thin steel webbing, tubing, license plate bezel, side latches, and dirt removed, the hatch weighed 36.2 lbs.
Also, I eliminated the lift cylinders and cut a dowel to hold up the hatch.
In all fairness, I will have to install some type of fascia to take the place of the rear window. Depending how much Lexan weighs/costs, I may go with thin gauged steel and aluminum supports and rivet the thing in. This couldn't weigh more that a couple of lbs.
Thoughts?
-Les
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Originally Posted by wheming
Turns out he was just ahead of the curve
. One trick I remember specifically he did was to gut the door of the window mechanisms. He used a simple section of seatbelt that matched to the interior color to raise and lower the windows. He had a simple male snap rivited onto the door frame and the female snap on the belt webbing just in the right spot when snapped they held the window in the upright position. As this was 5 years before my first Mini I thought he was nutz
