Tastefully stripped interiors

Anyone have good pics or info on 'tastefully'' stripped or partially stripped interiors?

I'm all for a good full race interior, but it would be tiring for my DD/ track day car.

My idea is to lose some weight in the car (F body) but not worry about every last oz.. Also, I'd like a more race-ish aesthetic.

Some ideas for my car:

Remove stock speakers and add clip in speaker boxes that can be removed for track days.

Remove some of the horrible plastic interior panels to replace with aluminum or leave raw (within reason).

Make rear carpet 'snap' in to easily remove. (this to kill some noise on the street)

hole saw and dimple die some of the interior metal.

Ozite carpet

I'll probably remove the rear seats, and leave the headliner

My 2 cents -

Every thing you do to make it "race-ish" will make it that much crappier of a place to spend your commute, or road trips, or whatever. The biggest weight penalty in most modern cars is seats, especially electric ones. They weigh a ton compared with race seats. But race seats would get really, really old real fast for a DD. 

- stock speakers usually aren't very heavy, especially in older cars with tiny stock magnets lol. 

- pulling the door panels and just do them in aluminum or (for more lightweight) coroplast. I guess that sounds fine, though not sure it really saves much weight. 

- it's not the carpet that's heavy, it's usually the tar soundproofing applied underneath it (that stuff gets REALLY heavy). So unless you're gonna take that up, making the carpet snap out probably isn't much of a difference, weight-wise.

- the amount of weight saved by putting holes in stuff is pretty much inconsequential. I have an *actual* dedicated race car and have hardly done any of that. 

- the "race-iest" thing you could do aside from seats is an aftermarket steering wheel. But then you lose your airbag, radio controls, or whatever - though you may not have any of that stuff on an F-body, so that would be a worthwhile thing that would be fine for DD duties. 

My suggestion would be to make the EXTERIOR aesthetically race-y instead, and don't bother with the interior in any major way that can't be easily undone. Your big weight things that actual race cars get rid of are things you won't want to get rid of: seats, air conditioning, entire stereo system, soundproofing, power window motors, etc etc.  The things you're talking (aside from removing the rear seats) probably adds up to like 10lbs. Taking your passenger seat out would probably lose 5x as much weight. I'd suggest a rollbar, but that actually will add weight, of course...

So instead, get some nice lightweight wheels, maybe do a vinyl wrap, a spoiler or something, IDK. 

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Alternately, do what makes you happy. Hell, my competition race car has plenty of things still in it I could get rid of to knock off a dozen more pounds (or more). But it's all a tradeoff to what you want, what you like, and what your priorities are!

I'm just saying, most of your driving time is on the street. So don't make the car into anything you'll hate driving every day and only love at trackdays...

Factory radios are heavy. Swap to a Bluetooth single din and you'll save a good chunk. 
Seats can be low hanging fruit too

edit: Irish covered that

Clearly, I’m in the “gut your f body” camp. I think racecars on the street feel special, use earbuds if you want music. They’re heavy cars though, mine is stripped with sparcos and harnesses/harness bar, a dash and door panels, but that’s it for interior. It’s still ONE THOUSAND SEVENTY TWO POUNDS heavier than my daily driver. lol 

In reply to jamscal :

Race cars  that start out as street cars have lots of weight in sound proofing, seam sealer,  and undercoating. An XJS I race prepped lost 210 pounds .  Then there are power windows and frames. Plus side door guard beams 82 pounds a door.  The resulting door is light as a feather  ( after you cut away the inner panel to clear the rollcage. and doesn't need those heavy door hinges or door latches. Another 63 pounds per door.   Weld 2 short  1/2 tubes tubes to the bottom of the doors and just drop them into matching  holes in the rocker panels.  A couple of 1/2 tubes slide forward and backward into the door pillars. Yes I have to step over the roll cage bars to get in but the doors now weight 14 pounds.  Trunk lid is the pattern for a quick and easy mold. Use fiberglass cloth or save about 1/2 the weight and use carbon fiber. I use aged out prepeg and buy it for a little more Than fiberglass cloth. As prepeg it doesn't like to conform to sharp corners but a pass or two with a heat gun solves that.  A little trick is to cover any holes from emblems or trim etc with clear shipping tape.  Since the hood is exposed to a lot of wind. You have to make it pretty stiff rather than putting layer after layer of Matt  on which gets very heavy once soaked with resin.  Put a layer or two of cloth or carbon fibers . Let it set. Then pop it out of the mold and use that light foam with a layer or two of cloth or Carbon fiber.    Painted the same color as the rest of the car and almost no one can tell the difference. Unless they lift it. 
 

Same with the hood 

I'll even make patterns out of the fenders.  While you do save a little weight the main advantage is the ease of replacement in an accident. Remarkably though I've never had to do that. It's just nice to know how easy it is if it ever happened. 

Lightning holes. Bare interiors look better with holes.

I guess this Singer interior would be the ultimate expression of what I'm talking about. 

Other detail examples would be how a lotus elise as a dimpled aluminum pc under the dash in lieu of a console, and some aluminum floor 'panels' in front of the seats...and door panels in a 911 RS America (964).

Its kind of in the give and take realm..  My bugeye sprite - well the carpet kit for the whole interior left a lot to be desired and I felt it looked tons better with only floor and trunk mats installed rather than the whole floor/trand tunnel/etc and no panels covering things in that car. 

The road noise aspect just feels much more acceptable to me in a drop top. I have been in a stripped 3rd gen camaro and it wasnt too pleasant just with road noise reverberating around. 

I drove my racecar plenty on the street after gutting it. Many long road trips. I left the full dash and firewall sound proofing. I feel that adds a lot to the feel and quietness of the car. I've also still got the stock wheel. Otherwise it's got no interior, full cage and a Sparco seat. It's quite comfy still. We managed to get it 530lbs lighter than stock and I'd guess most of that weight came from seats and bumpers.

Be prepared for things to get a lot louder with every interior piece you take out. Pulling the rear seat and anything behind it will "let" you hear a lot of diff noise and road noise. There are probably some vents on the sides of the trunk that let fresh air in. They'll start making more noise too. 
All that said, on my 318ti I've taken out the trim panels from the trunk and rear seat area, rear speakers, and the carpet under the rear seat and dropped 30lbs. There's still a lot of carpet and padding and plastic i can take out to lose more weight and my car is significantly smaller than an f-body. So you'd probably drop a good bit more weight than me. 

My 89 SHO racer has just the dash, everything else is gone. Window regulators, door crash protection, most door inside metal cut out. With a cage it weighs 3000lbs. I believe the factory weight was 3350. The power seats were major heavy. 
 

I drive it to the track if it's less than a couple hours, but it's not comfortable and earplugs are needed. At least I can use the cool shirt for the heat. Using a 5 point harness for regular driving is a pain. 

Here is the interior of my EF Civic hatchback that I built for the 2012 Challenge.

Its cheap indoor outdoor carpet from lowes.

Appleseed said:

Lightning holes. Bare interiors look better with holes.

 

  Nice, kinda has a WWII feel to it. What car is it?

In reply to pimpm3 (Forum Supporter) :

You did a fantastic job on the interior of that Civic.

Scott

I don't know what everyone's talking about because I saw the gratuitous use of dimple dies and I got woozy with lust.

Very afraid that if I were to acquire the means to create them, not long after everything I own would look like a box grater.

I took my street 1990 Miata down to a fairly minimal weight when I was considering building a Locost, I wanted to see what it was like. No HVAC, wipers, soft top, sound deadening (not that you save much on a Miata there) and a few other things. It was pretty perky, but overall it had a much bigger effect on the liveability of the car than on performance. In other words, this is a great way to turn a fun car into a not-fun car. I'd seriously consider just what you're expecting to gain.

wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) said:

 

This car looks great - I really like the way he extended the crash pad across the entire dash.

But this car also will have no heat, AC or any sort of ventilation for things like defrosting the windshield. It will be hot (the header runs right beside the driver's foot), it will be noisy and the floor will be slippery.  I'm ignoring the fact that there's no audio system, no way to raise the headlights and no way to turn on the four-way flashers, that's a stylistic choice.

Source:

I wasn't there, but pictures of the Volvo S70/850 interior at last year's challenge looked fantastic.

In reply to L5wolvesf :

Not sure. I just googled "Lightning hole hot rod model A interior." Of course now I can't even find the picture to try and figure out where it came from.

I don't know if it's tasteful or not but here's the lightened interior of my Camaro.  Carbon fiber dash, no sound deadening under the carpet or behind the door panels, aluminum panels hiding the battery and the dry sump tank.  I don't think I lost as much weight as I gained back with the cage but I do know that between the noise, heat and having to climb over the door bars it stopped being enjoyable to drive on the street.  It also really needs to be cleaned in some of those photos.

Stripping is a difficult thing to manage to do tastefully. Go too far and you either end up with something you would've rather not, and full of regret about it, or you end up with blatant, unapologetic, pornography.

I suspect the bits proposed to be made removable for track days (speakers and passenger carpet) aren't going to sum up to a difference you can feel, and since you can't win a track day and would be infinitesimally faster than an otherwise identical car (i.e. zero difference at a non-competitive track day where there's nobody to pip for the podium by 0.002 seconds), I'd just leave them installed.

You may be faster just for because of the less frantic feel in the car from still having all the carpet. Not kidding.

Of course, the aesthetic (including auditory) parts are just as important when not competing. If stripped-looking and noisier is more fun, do it! (Still not kidding.)

Love the interior of this older Z car.

Okay, the Datsun is really nicely done. I could plausibly turn the Targa Miata into that sort of interior. You know, if I was good.