I tried searching but didnt get what I was looking for. How much does weight really matter? Take my 92 dx hatchback for example, I made 275 whp if I were to put the same setup with the same power into say a civic coupe or something that was 400-500lbs heavier how much of a difference would it make considering a good driver was driving both. Are we talking tenths of a second or like .5 second faster?


BTW if this is more suited for drag racing please move it.

 

weight matters a LOT. weight does not tranfer directly into et's, so theres no saying exactly. what really moves your car is torque, horsepower is just a measure of how quickly the engine puts out torque, weather it puts big torque out slowly, or small torque out quickly, they both mean a lot of hp. anyway, torque is ft/lbs, and with out getting too technical, its the ability to move weight over a distance, so if you have 400hp and a 4000lb car, it will be the same thing as if you have 200hp and a 2000lb car. so you can actually figure out how much hp you'd lose to get the same effect as gaining 4-500lbs, but it depends on your current weight

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Littlegreend15 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">weight matters a LOT. weight does not tranfer directly into et's, so theres no saying exactly. what really moves your car is torque, horsepower is just a measure of how quickly the engine puts out torque, weather it puts big torque out slowly, or small torque out quickly, they both mean a lot of hp. anyway, torque is ft/lbs, and with out getting too technical, its the ability to move weight over a distance, so if you have 400hp and a 4000lb car, it will be the same thing as if you have 200hp and a 2000lb car. so you can actually figure out how much hp you'd lose to get the same effect as gaining 4-500lbs, but it depends on your current weight</TD></TR></TABLE>

Very, very well said.

The folklore formula is that for every 100 pounds you drop, you shave a tenth off your E.T. Now this isn't an exact thing, especially since we don't all race in vacuum with perfect drivers and awesome track conditions, but you can apply it roughly enough to assume that putting your engine into a car that weighs 500 pounds more is going to rob you of about half a second in the quarter.

The real issue with weight reduction is how much it matters to braking, handling and acceleration.