I made my own custom cut of Aliens a while ago. The only scenes from the SE that I kept were:

* Hadley's Hope colony: Pan from windblown wastelands to place-name sign, crane move over miniature / buggy rolling inside / conversation between colony admin and aide, children / "Wayland Yutani: We build better worlds"-sign

* Buggy with Newt's family rolls over dust-blown wasteland (all dialogue scenes cut out) / parents get out, tell children to behave / enter Alien mother-ship (of which we only catch glimpses, never the 'Giger shot') / Newt's face in window, time passes and wind blows / the door slams open, face-hugger scene, Newt screams / cut to Ripley's hand holding a cigarette (this transition is just too good to miss!)

I also kept all the references to the automatic guns, the setup & one of the firing sequences (the one with Higgs counting down), I just liked the shots of the aliens getting shredded. ;)

The 'official' theatrical released on DVD seems a little stunted to me, while the SE is over-blown to the point of being boring. Not to show the Alien spaceship (in the theatrical) was a touch of daring genius on Cameron's part, signaling that this film stood on its own, without unnecessary throwbacks. The budding love story with Hicks is much more subtle and less distracting in the original. The image of Ripley's daughter is totally superfluous - too short and out of joint to count, but it messes up the timing.

Too bad the film wasn't released on DVD prior to being recut; we'd have a proper source for the original foreign language audio tracks.