Hello, I just shaved the door handles on my 57 Ranch Wagon and was wondering if you guys leave the interior handles or take them off as well? Thanks!
always good to have a way out - left interior handles on with electric door openers when outside, with door poppers
No take them off, you won't ever want to get out of the car, if you ever loose power you can wait for someone to fix it. Lol. Better leave them right?
I shaved the handles inside and out on a rod project once. After driving it several hundred miles it occured to me that I had no way out of the car in the event of an emergency. Interior handles were promptly installed. I don't like shaved handles anymore.
Locked doors with no handles. You can never be too safe. P.S. don't tell him about the bats. It will only make it worse
What i do is convert the door lock to become a mechanical door openor - push down and have it open the door. Then you can get rid of the inside handles. I machine a piece of stainless steel rod that replaces the original door lock and turn a rounded nose on it, let it stick up about same height as the door lock, give it a tidy little polish and they look and work great - esp getting in with the window down, just put your hand over the window sill on top of the openor and the door pops open like magic.
Funny story my buddy was redoing his interior and him and another buddy decided to drive the car around the my track. As they were coming up the back straightaway the mechanical water temp sender line arked on the fuse block starting a fire. So they went to jump out but there was no door handles or window roller upperer. So the passenger kicked the window out as the cabin was filling up with smoke. Funny stuff.
First of all, I don't recommend removing inside door handles. With that said, always have a plan to open the door, should you be outside the car with a dead battery. I used a long cable with a knob that I placed between the grill bars, running back thru the firewall, and following the wires for the solinoid into the door, leading to the point where the solinoid opens the latch. Plus a electrical jack to jump the car, under my running board. hope that helps. Bowtie40
Kinda hard to get out of the car with no inside handles. Even if you rig up some other way to open them, every other car you touch has an inside handle and you're going to be fumbling around for how to open the damn thing the first 100, 150 times you go to get out of it.
Keep the inside handles....You will thank me. While we are talking about shaving the outside handles......Make damn sure you install some sort of non-electric, pull cable release for the door(s) that you can reach easily and get all of the selonoids, locks, strikers, hinges and doors adjusted properly BEFORE you shave the handles. Having to make all that shit work well (consistantly) may just make you leave the outside handles on......Good Luck!
Leave them on or weld the Doors up and make like the Duke's of Hazzard with No Windows that way you can just jump in or out! just my 3.5 cents
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