Leo Chiang DOT COM

I’ve been toying with the idea of adding vertical doors/Lambo doors to my Mustang for a long time. Since I’m downtown frequently and parking space is at a premium and usually small, not being able to open my doors out all the way usually made it difficult during entry and egress.

What stopped me from purchasing these Lambo door kits was primarily the cost. Most quality kits range in the $1500 to $2000 range. That’s quite a lot of money to spend on something that adds very little as far as practical use but massive gains on the “Wow” factor alone.

I decided to bite the bullet and purchased the door kit earlier this month. I managed to haggle a relatively good deal so it was a green light for the project.

I arrived eager and excited at my mechanic’s shop, looking forward to seeing my doors open like a Lamborghini by the end of the day. Unfortunately, there was a LOT more work required than the advertised 4-6 hours install time. And despite the kit being a direct bolt-on application, it required numerous time consuming fabrications for the doors to close properly.

The passenger side door was installed first and with relative ease. It turned out that the inner fender did not need to be rolled and the electrical wiring did not need to be extended (although it was stretched to its limit). The Mustang doors are very heavy, so it took a very long time to adjust the doors so that they did not “float” too much while closing to allow for proper alignment on closure.

The driver side door was not as smooth as the passenger side. First off, the wiring was much shorter on the driver’s side and required the wires to be extended. To do this properly takes a lot of time to cut and extend each wire one-by-one, colour code it, then properly secure it with heat electrical shrinkwrap to protect from moisture. Next, there was not enough clearance on the driver’s side for the hinges to properly open and close unless the inner fender was rolled, which also meant that the passenger side fender had to be rolled to even the appearance. Guess what? That meant more time and money spent on labour and the added cost of renting a fender roller to do the job properly.

By this time the advertised 4-6 hour install had cost me two full days. It was now Friday and, with the shop closed for the weekend, I asked them to slap the car back together so I can at least have my car back for the weekend. We would continue finishing the work the following week. My mechanic worked late on a Friday night to get the car ready and drivable. I felt really bad when I arrived and found out that it was his birthday and because of me he was late for his own birthday party

After a whole weekend and a party on Sunday night (details of the party in an upcoming post), and having a bunch of drunken girls banging the hell out of my doors, I made the decision to remove the Lambo door kit and put the stock hinges back on. It looked great and was popular with the ladies but it just wasn’t practical on a car that sees as much use as my daily driver. There was also still some expensive work to be done for the kit to work properly and I wasn’t comfortable with all my passengers using the right amount of respect and finesse required for these doors to close in alignment.

So here I am, learning my lesson in an expensive mistake that also cost me the use of my car for three days. We also found out that the wires on the passenger side had been stretched so much one of the plugs had come loose, rendering the door controls inoperative. If you’ve ever had to get behind the dash of a car to get to the wires and plugs you’d know this was a total pain in the ass! Luckily, my mechanic is awesome and, more importantly, honest. He only charged me for two days labour, as he figured it was a nice learning curve for himself . . . I’m sure he felt sorry for me too.

I still think this is a great kit and would work well on a weekend car or a show car, but the costs and time involved is just not worth it for a daily driver like myself. Of course, to each their own

Posted on February 20th, 2008 by Leo
Filed under: Lucid Thoughts