Last week when I was doing the transmission fluid change I looked around underneath as normal. The last time I had to remove the FM butterfly brace center section I left it out to see if I noticed any difference (I didn’t). I had left the wings that connect the center piece to the frame rails. I saw that both sides had a spot where they were hard up against the bottom of the car. Hmm, maybe some transmittal of vibration through them?
Since they are no longer serving any purpose, I decided to remove them today. Worked on the passenger side first as it is more difficult as you will see. Removed the seat and lower seatbelt bolt along with the side sill scuff plate. This was enough to allow me to get under the carpet to access the top of the bolts. I had to cut away my sound deadening pad in way of two bolt heads:
The passenger side of the frame rail has a couple of studs to reroute the brake line brackets along that side. This is what makes the inner bolts on that side harder to access. Picture from the other side after I did the passenger side wing removal, you can clearly see the lines running inboard of the frame rail.
The job actually went a little quicker than when I installed everything as I now have a 3/8” impact wrench that I didn’t have before. Still took some finagling to get the lines out of the way far enough to access the nuts. Got the nuts all off and removed the wing. Sprayed the spot where the wing was on the body with some Rustoleum aerosol undercoating I had around. Dropped that side and did the same thing on the driver’s side but quicker. Here’s how the contact point on the driver’s side looked prior to undercoating:
While the seats were out I vacuumed underneath (if you have never done this you would be surprised how much you are unable to reach trying to vacuum under the seats with them in place). Did a little spot removal too. I probably won’t notice a lot of difference, I hardly ever drive with the top up so my points of reference are few and far between. But hey, weight reduction is always good!