LeafGT

A good evening of pulling stuff out the car. The joy of unscrewing a car aerial. The long and snakey washer fluid tube. Top tip don't go near airbags unless you absolutely know what you're doing.  Our advise is just don't do it.  Get a professional to do it. A series of things were removed from the roof lining in order to remove the roof lining.  You know the kind of things up there, sun glasses holders, handles, lights, sun visors.  There was nothing that couldn't be removed with your basic tools, screwdriver, hammer, secateurs, spoons, scissors etc. Bingo!  Out it goes.  Such a large thing that weighs so incredibly little it turns out. After much heated debate the light unit is going back for now.  The classic trade-off of being able to see versus having a car as light as possible. Windscreen wiper on the floor.  The kind of thing we've come to expect. Weight savings Car aerial and miscellaneous screws/bits 175g Above the door handles 220g ...

Removing parts of the center console. By now it's safe to assume that unless otherwise stated, anything shown was either pulled or unscrewed apart.  Below is the e-brake switch. Fitting a new battery (the previous one had died). ..and removing the passenger side door card. Literally the same kind of fixings as the rear ones, which we've covered in these blogs already. Weight savings Door handle - 125g Parking brake surround 75g Window switch surround 83g Centre console 236g Speaker and screw 230g Door handle underneath bit 7g Door card 2800g Sub-total: 3.6kg Added to the previous 113.4kg Total: 117kg We need to put that into perspective, that is about the weight of a giant panda.  Can you imagine a giant panda in the passenger seat?  You would notice that.

First job of the day, repeat the work done on the previous blog, which was to replace the glass with plastic on the offside rear door, by doing the same for the nearside rear door.  But the breakdown of actions was covered in the previous blog so we won't repeat that here. The rubber gloves have arrived!  This is an essential bit of kit for handling electricity with your hands.  If in doubt don't go near electricity when it is dangerous, especially with your hands. Time to continue with pulling away the trim, the trim is almost exclusively held on by the same poppers as we've seen before, with just the occasional screw fixing being encountered today. We are now venturing into the front of the car.  Mats and trim are vacating the car. Beneath the carpet are various pieces of polystyrene. We're not going to remove the carpet without removing the front seats and surrounding trim, to remove the seats it's just 4 screws and a couple of electric clips underneath.  The...

Before more weight saving  we have exciting news. We've now sourced a rubber bung to fill the gap where the rear wiper motor was. The job this time is to replace the glass window pain in the offside rear door with a plastic replacement.  So we start by removing the glass and the piece of wood holding it up. Then, a conversation to decide if we should do the small window segment. Out it comes. The reflection in the glass is truly haunting. You can remove the strut but we were to find to create a single opening but it would become apparent that things get tricky with the seal so for now at least it's staying in. The small segment of glass can be teased out of the surround and as usual everything is getting weighed as we go. Time to cut some plastic to replace the glass. We're not using the interior door handles so those have come off.  In goes the pretend glass. Nobody is going to tell the difference. Repeating the process for the little segment. . So far, so surprisingly e...

Our quest to 'lightweight' the car continues. In our world ''lightweight' is a verb.  This time it's the tailgate.  Time to get this trim off.  No screws to be seen so where do we start? There are a couple of caps we can pop off to hopefully reveal some screws that'll get us started. Nope. So there's this other cover that's going to pop off and hopefully show us how to undo this thing. Turn's out it's just access to the lock/latch.  Interesting but not helpful. Time to get brave.  Turns out that if you prise the trim away from the metal it will come off, it's a bunch of poppers like the door card and you have to work your way around.  But it's really unpleasant pulling it off because it takes a lot of effort or leverage to pull it apart and flexes and feels as though it's going to break.  In this case it came apart with a series of loud cracks but miraculously nothing was damaged. There are actually two parts to this.  The thinner...