Can I remove any of the bracing/webbing underneath the roof to save weight?

Will I hurt the structural integrity if I do this?

 

Yes, you can remove it and yes you will loose the strength of the car. There are better place to remove weight. Once these supports are gone the car will bend in the middle eventually breaking the car in half. Also your handling will go to crap. Also if you ever flip the car your pretty well screwed.

IMO there are better ways to loose the weight. What are you trying to do with the car?

 

Imagine one of those old I-beam bridges without any upper crossmembers. The first good gust of wind would rip them down causing all kinds of death and destruction. That would be the equivalent to taking out the roof bracing in your car.

 

There's the main supports on the front side and then one on the rear. If you remove the smaller webbing in between the two, will you lose rigidity?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by gwiffer &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">There's the main supports on the front side and then one on the rear. If you remove the smaller webbing in between the two, will you lose rigidity?</TD></TR></TABLE>
Put down the plasma cutter please.

Honestly as said before leave it alone.

 

I think you should consider this more carefully. You're talking about risking the structural integrity of your car to lose maybe a couple of pounds of metal. there are better ways to do weight reduction.

 

Lose the glass and replace with lexan = HUGE weight savings of epic proportions

Sounds to me like you're throwing caution to the wind, gut the **** out of your front and rear bumper supports = 50lbs ~~ish

Hood and hatch can be replaced with composites. If I remember correctly there was a guy on EF-honda with a zc powered hatch claiming 1400 ish lbs with extensive composite replacement and fully gutted interior/non street legal exterior (plastic plates to replace glass headlights etc)

Gutting the interior, tar, seats, dash, panels may yield a significant weight savings.

Lightweight wheels to drop rotational weight

That's about it. Anything safely removed beyond that is really negligible. Lexan + bumper supports will yield the greatest weight savings.

Don't start removing metal from an already overly flexible chassis. An EF is already a minimalistic design. Look at crash photos. the cars aren't much better than paper mache

 

those ribbings are so flimsy.. i would think they are there to keep the shape.reinforce the roof and help structuraly integrity in case of a rollover.

 

I thought they would be a lot heavier. I'm just goin to remove the bumper supports and gut everything else. thanks

Where can I find a fiberglass hatch, lexan window kit (Do I need to cut my own?) for an EF hatchback? I only see crx parts.

http://www.zcspeed.com/racecar.htm

The hatch looks to be just a piece of plastic, and I can't find any pictures of the interior. How did he get 1410lbs?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CRX Toad &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> What are you trying to do with the car? </TD></TR></TABLE>

 

drag (+ drive on the street) NO DD

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by gwiffer &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Can I remove any of the bracing/webbing underneath the roof to save weight?

Will I hurt the structural integrity if I do this?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes it will hurt it. Don't do it unless you want to die while driving.

 

I've done a roof swap (changing from sun-roof to STD) and can tell you that you will not remove much weight by cutting out the cross-members.

It's not worth it and you will loose strength in the roof structure.

Wes V