I have a 5th gen Accord sedan and I want to shave the rear door handles. What all do I need to do to get this off the ground? What tools/material do I need to start off wtih?

 

Mig, body solder, and some sheetmetal. Make the sheetmetal parts so that they fit into the hole, mig them on, then use body solder, so that you leave no holes for moisture to go between the seam.

 

Good old body solder, practice first before you use this on your car.

 

Rice, IMHO, shave front and rear, not one or the other, doesn't make sense to just shave the rear.

 

i personally like to take the door off, remove the handle set it on some workhorses. Then take some card board (shiny surface poster board) and tape it to the door skin (with ducktape) to the follow the contour. On the inside of the door, take some 40 grit sand paper and scuff the area really good. Goto your local fiberglass supply store and get a yard of 1.5 oz chop mat and a strip of woven mat, some quality resin vinylester withstands heat and shrink much better than standard resin, hardner, and some brushes. Take some auto wax and wax just the card board area on the inside of the door making sure not to get it on the metal. This will make it easy to take the cardboard off when u are done. Now take the chop mat and shred it up and put a genereous amount on each door handle. Next mix up your resin and fully saturate the mat working it to get rid of all bubbles. After that take a square of the woven mat cut to be about 2 inches larger on all sides and lay that on top of the resin soaked chop mat then continue to soak the woven mat work out any remaining bubbles and let it sit and harden. When it hardens the next day take off the card board and you will have a perfectly countoured replacement for your door handly that is extremely strong and you door skin will have zero warpage (90 percent of the time it warps when welding unless you have some one who is very skilled at this, and only lays down a few spot weld at a time.) Also the body work to finish the job on the outside will be much less using this method. I have done this on many cars and they all have held up extremely well with no cracking or a outline of the handle reappearing down the road.

Some things to consider before starting.
1. practice using fiberglass before doing this if this is your first time.
2. where rubber gloves at all times, and a respirator.
3. Do in a well ventilated area.
4. Make sure the fiberglass is thick enough, I would say 3-4 layers worth of chop mat backed by woven mat.
5. Take your time to work out all bubbles b/c these cause weakness in you final product.
5. Mix the resin to hardner ratio exactly. To much harder and it will harder way to fast, to little and it will never cure good.
6. Let it sit for 2-3 days to make sure the fiberglass does not shrink on you, before finishing up the body work.
7. Install your door poppers and enjoy.

 

Thanks for all the input.

 

just make sure you don't ever wanna run at the drag strip again

and easier alternative that's very clean and subtle is to get 4-door civic rear handls of the same year..and just bolt them to the doors of what you have now getting rid of the key hole...and still leaving you car able to go race

 

I dont run my Accord on the drag strip. We (Urban Motors) have a project we're about to start working on --->*Project Civic*<---
I'm going to post everything on here once we get it going.

 

I personally wouldnt go with the fiberglass idea. No matter what you do, fiberglass is going to break away from steel...no matter what. May not be for another 5 years, but it will happen. Just do as stated before, get some sheetmetal, remove your handles, cut the sheetmetal to fit the hole SNUGLY, and the slightly bend it to get the right contour, then tack it twice, then do a few more tacks a few minutes later...etc. Another thing u can do is get a couple towels or wash cloths soaked with water and put them around the weld area...this will greatly reduce warpage.
Kyle

 

Kool, thanks for the info. Most likely I wasn't goin to do fiber glass.

 

fiberglass is extremely strong if done CORRECTLY. it is a art to do fiberglass the right way, I have seen alot of hack jobs and that makes people shy away from fiberglass. Hope it works out for you .

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vaperformance &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">fiberglass is extremely strong if done CORRECTLY. it is a art to do fiberglass the right way, I have seen alot of hack jobs and that makes people shy away from fiberglass. Hope it works out for you .</TD></TR></TABLE>

Most likely I'm goin to stay away from the fiberglass.