my engineer friends are looking at em, and the performance has gotten to be fine, the size and weight are good, but they are still too expensive

 

Mazda put the components in their place on purpose. Has anyone actually weighed a car (corner by corner) to see stock vs. weight reduction or redistribution?

 

LOL, yeah, and then the put the steering wheel and pedals on the opposition side from what they designed.

last time I corner balanced my car with me in the drivers seat and a 46 lb yellow top in the passenger side storage bin:



yeah, the front left is exactly where I want more weight.

 

lmao! true!

we ran Spec E30 for a season, and the minimum weight for that class is dumb, i think its 2750lbs, in a 150hp car. i think when you pull all the interior out, and put a cage in it, they are like 2550lbs, at least ours was, and the car is really front heavy, the engine is a big iron 6.

so we worked on the car and got it to the point where we actually had a possibility of winning, so we decided to ballast it up to race weight, which was actually illegal, as you're only allowed 100lbs, and we needed 200lbs.

so we added 200lbs to the rear of the car, and our lap times didn't change, car was slower in a straight line, but it went much faster thru turn 11 (at infineon/sears point/sonoma)...

weight distribution is almost as important as the total weight. so some unbalanced POS, like the E30 is going to be slower than something heavy, but really well balanced, like say an Rx8.

 

Your correct, it is where mine has been for the past 6 years, but when the basic and cheap methods of weight reduction are being used, the rear will naturally end up being lighter. I dont plan on adding weight so my only options are to strategically distribute which ever parts I can.

I have been trying to lighten the front as much as I can to get them as close as my budget allows. I recently simplified and removed 90% of the unnecessary wiring in the front of the car and engine bay both for looks and of course weight distribution. I want fixed headlight, but have yet to see a set I like. So the front is as light as i can make it, on my budget. So by placing a few things as far back as possible should help some. In fact, I purposely left my rear impact bumper on and not my front one. I try!=)