Well after reading more on 2point6's car and the weight he got it down to, I am curious to see how much weight I can remove from my car. It is a 90 LX sedan with auto tranny. Here is the deal, I thought my **** would be pretty light with the stuff already removed, but the lowest I have gotten it to is 2840lbs by a large truck scale. Here is a list of things removed or changed. I have a cf hood, no antenna (shaved in 1/4 panel replacement) no back seats, no trunk interior I mean nothing, no spare, tools or jack. Also I am missing the splash guard underneath the front, and a wheel well plastic shield. I do not have my speaker box in there any more either. I was hoping to get more out of the car, but this is all I have come up with and still have the car streetable.
Here are things that I think are making it heavier possible, I have 17inch konig tantrums, and a wings west bumper and stock front seats. How can I get more weight out of the car? My goal is to hit around 2600lbs. Already I noticed a difference with the weight removed. When I started, the car weighed 3020lbs. Where am I going wrong here?

 

You might want to perform the auto-manual swap, the manual tranny weighs at least 75 pounds lighter, if you got the money, also go for a lightweight flywheel, min 10lbs. If the car is not you daily driver, and don't mind losing driveability, tear out the ps. These things not only will lower your weight, they will also improve overall engine performances by reducing drag and rotationnal masses (not true for the flywheel on ¼mile, but good for track racing).

If you're willing to go further, replace front and back windshield for polycarbonate or lexan (is that the right name in english?) windshields, should spare you another 50lbs. Then tear out the dash, I don't know how much this weighs, but I think another 50lbs is minmal, tear out the carpet and tar. You can also replace your gas tank for a fibreglass gas tank.

On the track, run open header, this would give you at least another 30lbs. Hind wheels could be as narrow as possible if you run ¼mile. Fibreglass fender panels, and doors panels if you can get those custom fabicated, as well as trunk pannels. Remove front and back bumpers, but not the exterior lips for aerodynamism.

If you want to go further on still, try and find aluminum or titanium bolts (I don't even know if it is available anywhere, this is just an idea), remove as may steel bolts as possible, and replace with the least possible of the Al or Ti bolts. You also may want to see if plastic seal beams are available instead of your heavy glass sealed beams.

Ok, these are just ideas. I don't know if they are all feasible, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were able to bring your weight down around 2200lbs doing this. Kentuckyaccord could tell a lot to you about this. His car is insane.

Regards,
Jeff


[Modified by sauceman77, 6:43 PM 1/18/2003]

 

Well the whole point is to keep it as a daily driver. Those are some good ideas for total race. I am just playing around with the weight thing right now just to see how much I can lose with keeping the car functional. Thanks for the replies, I will keep those in mind if I ever decided to go full race on a project.

 

remove the tar on the floor. theres probably 15 lbs of that stuff in there. If you just remove that but put the carpet back in it won't be too lould, about like a type-r

 

yep, good idea.
First paragraph of what I said is feasible for a daily driver, except for ps, I'd say.

You could get yourself sparco seats which are lighter, but they have the belts diasdvantage, but they will spare you some weight.

Gas tank could still be changed without any downsides.

Wheels, go with OEM 95 EX, same bolt pattern I think???, but they weigh 16.5lbs, much less than 17" and less rotationnal mass too, so more get up and go, and definitely smoother ride. Wings West bumper is not a big deal IMO, but taking it off may reduce a bit aerodynamical drag.

If you like, there are the interior parts you can tear out (if no girlfriends or prospects )

Stainless steel headers usually weigh less than stock cast iron manifolds.
But don't expect going down to 2500lbs.


[Modified by sauceman77, 8:41 PM 1/18/2003]

 

my old 92 turbo lude weighed in at a whopping 2981 with me in it and a quarter tank of gas(according to a junkyard scale) Let's see weight reduction, No AC, Heater, or Power Steering, opened the dash up and took everything out that wasn't needed, I had no climate control stuff at all, no ducting, no controls, hell I didn't have a heater core or AC so why keep the rest of the crap) 8 gallon fuel cell(no gas tank), completly gutted trunk and rear interior and most front interior gone, custom door panels with 1/8" luan and thin vinyl, momo cup seat(only 1 most of the time, I did have another but that's 30 lbs) 11lb flywheel, 4 puck clutch, 15" konig heliums with nitto 555s putting it to the ground. After all that she weighed in at 2455 with my big *** and a 1/2 cage in it, that and punching her out almost to 2.5 and 12psi putting out about 240 to the ground put her into high 12s and some of the most insane handling you could imagine(only if you tunred the boost down, she was a bit frisky in the corners with high boost)