Anyone have any in-depth weight reduction strategies?

 

From what I recall form memory some suggest that removing basically everything from the interior including dash, sound deadening under carpet, bin frame, and then also moving the battery from stock location to right side behind the seat location where the bin used to be is a great start. Other than that there are some replacement parts made from aluminum rather than steel that can be bought and replaced (bumper shocks) but make sure your official rules for your class are OK with that type of modification. I have also heard of people WITH DOOR BARS INSTALLED (ie full blown cage) removing their side impact beams from their doors which are worth a couple pounds each. Other than that stuff there are CF hoods available, not sure about fenders. Back in the day I think there were lexan (polycarbonate) hatch windows and hatch available which would considerably lower weight. Also replacement of windshield with a custom lexan one along with door windows are options.

Obviously the best type of car to start with is one WITHOUT a sunroof.

 

ISCRacing.com has polycarbonate rear quarter and hatch window replacement.

 

Get a Braille battery, do the 2nd gen water pump mod found in the archives, remove bumpers and get a bodykit or custom something up. Swap seats out to racing seats (or seat, do you need 2?)
Fill tires with helium :P

 

step 1. remove interior.

 

1.Buy an early production SA
2.Remove emissions
3.RB exhaust with universal muffler
4. Remove AC and PS
5. Remove interior and sound deadener
6. Remove bumpers if it's a track car
7.Lexan glass
8.Remove passenger seat.
9.Cut hood skeleton
10. Remove wiper bottles, wipers too if a track car.
11. Simplify wiring harness
12.Remove headlights and or motors

 

my car is pretty light, its very simple though. remove the emissions/ac/nikki/dash/interior.

you need to keep the door bars, we recently crashed the race car, and door bars actually work! (its a honda, no mazda's were harmed) the car is a race car and it has a cage, but even hitting the tire wall @60+ mph, it didn't need it, the door bars handled everything.

2. mazda's wiring is actually pretty light. the rear harness weighs about a pound. the front harness is maybe 10? and if you're keeping it a street car there are like 8 wires that can come out, so total weight reduction is like 8 ounces. the custom rear harness that came out of peepers was easily 15lbs, big wires and lots of scotch locks, and tape and zip ties = heavy!

3. WHERE you take the weight out of the car is important too. when you strip out a LHD Rx7 it ends up being heavy on the left front, and this might not be faster than having something more balanced. we ran spec E30 for a season, and those cars are cookie tins with an amazingly heavy engine, so they end up really front heavy. i'll skip the story, but when we added the 200lbs of ballast to the trunk we needed to make weight, the lap times actually went down.

 

Hit the gym. And don't fill your tank all the way up.

 

good points, actually. gas is almost 7lbs a gallon...

 

Was that in Grassroots Motorsports? I read a similar story in there.

 

Acid dip the chassis. Then single-coat the paint.

Well, you did say 'insane'.

 

What if you don't paint the car at all? That's like 2 more pounds of weight reduction. Plus all the rust holes will eventually eat away 2000 pounds of your chasis, lol.

To the OP...Whatever you do decide to remove, PLEASE don't throw it away. Some of these parts can be hard to come by. I'm sure someone needs them somewhere.

 

not that i know of? although we're not the only ones to crash a car road racing, it happens