Shaved door handles

[BigBlockOlds]

Okay, so I have shaved the door handles on my '87 Cutlass Supreme.

For those of you who have done this, what are you using for door poppers and emergency entry? Do you still have the door locks or is there any reason to keep the door locks inside if there's now handle or lock cylinder on the outside?

Is there a manual cable setup out there for the emergency entry (in case of system failure) that would also take a key to operate so that no just anyone could gain entry?

Thanks for the help,

[DRJDVM's '69]

I just did mine. I used the Electric Life solenoids and door poppers.

http://www.electric-life.com/shopexd.asp?id=824

I used these poppers since you can do them on the hinge side... they seem to work pretty good. They are pretty big, but luckily my kick panels are contoured just right. I basically put them where the cabin light switch sits in the door jam.

http://www.electric-life.com/shopexd.asp?id=1155

This is what I plan to use for a mnaul back up...

http://www.electric-life.com/shopexd.asp?id=831

As for the locks....no need since you dont have a handle on the outside anymore. Some guys recommend welding or disabling the lock mechanism to insure that you dont accidently lock the door. If you lock it and the windows are up, you are screwed.......

[BigBlockOlds]

Thanks for the info. I actually already have a keyless entry system from Electric Life that I was going to use originally to unlock the car. I'd imagine I can just reconfigure it to control the door solenoids instead of a lock solenoid.

As far as the door poppers, so your saying these actually pop the door open from the hinge side? How do you mount them? Do they need to be mounted so that they are perpendicular to the door?

If you don't mount them on the hinge side I assume you just have to drill into the body back by the latch to pop the door open?

That's a good idea for welding the lock mechanism. I was actually going to do away with the lock rod on the inside anyway so that I could smooth out the look of the door panel there and so that I wouldn't accidentally lock the door. But its probably still a good idea to disable it all together just in case when closing the door it might some how slip down.

Thanks,

[DRJDVM's '69]

The door solenoid has to have some serious "oomph" to pull the door latch.... I dont think the door lock solenoid will do it....but the controller might work...but not the solenoids.

My poppers are at an angle to the door......theres an angled flat spot where the switch that turns the cabin light on/off when you open the door is mounted. So the popper is pushing against a flat spot that is perpindicular to the popper, but not the actual door itself. Thats where I mounted mine

The popper has a collar that slides on the back of the tube and has a set screw (hate the set-up), so with that set-up you need to be able to get to the back of it. I saw a video on You Tube that had a similar spring but had a threaded collar with a nut....

Electric life has some other poppers that are designed to be near the latch side, that can be mounted with a blind hole (no access to the back side)

Shoot me an email and I'll send you some pix.....

[BigBlockOlds]

The door solenoid has to have some serious "oomph" to pull the door latch.... I dont think the door lock solenoid will do it....could be wrong.

Actually, what I meant was just using the keyless entry control box to control an actual shaved door handle pull solenoid instead of controlling a door lock solenoid. I would think the control box wouldn't care which is hooked up to it.

Shoot me an email and I'll send you some pix.....

Will do.

Thanks,