KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

Hi,

I am trying to put my RX7 on a diet since the 6 point cage weighs more than a couple of hundred pounds.

* What I have done so far:

- Removed sunroof and replaced with aluminum sheet.
- Removed all interior panels minus dash (door cards, cubbies, etc...)
- Removed all carpets and sound deadening.
- Replaced stock hood with Aluminum turbo hood.
- Gut the air pump and remove the lines and stuff coming from it (next week)

* What I know I can do: (and why it wasn't done yet)
- Lexan rear glass with fiber hatch (cant find a cheap one around)
- Single exhaust (I like the dual "Y" exhaust and has better flow)
- Replace fenders and doors for fiber ones (too expensive).


Is there anything else that can be done or removed for a reasonable price?

I was thinking about doing stuff like gutting the interior of the doors and just leaving the lock and crank for the window. Since I have two bars at each door, I do not think that I will be putting myself at any risk....

Any ideas?

Thanks!

w0ppe

As far as putting in Lexan, I've seen that (Although most were custom made). I have also seen just removing it right-out and leaving it open.
Have you tried getting light rims and tyres?
Removing engine emissions (Sounds like your goal is track built)?
Fibreglass seats and panels?
Aluminum drive-shaft?

clokker

iTrader: (2)

Why are you doing this?
If it's for racing, what does the sanctioning body allow in your class?
If it's for ***** and giggles street use, how hardcore do you feel like being and how close to really legal must you stay?

KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

Its a rally car.

I need to have the hatch closed somehow, so I cannot be open.
Same for the wheels, I am pretty much stuck with rally wheels, although I am using lighter ones at this moment.
I have removed all emissions already by installing an RB header with a custom pick up tube that Carlos at Bilbo built.
I have two Momo seats, and removed all panels. I was thinking about the fenders, but I cannot find cheap ones.

How much an aluminum driveshaft save? Again, it would depend on price.

Here is a picture of the car and the header we installed:

KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

Can you resize images? The first one is pretty big....

BTW, that is my wife driving on both pictures.

The car is being raced at SCCA rallycrosses and NASA Rallies. So it is pretty open what I can do.

However, the car is a street car, registered and insured. So I cannot go crazy as removing body panels and running without them...

clokker

iTrader: (2)

Cool...do I have some lights for you.

I see license plates on it, is she street driven?

KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

What do you mean about the lights?

Yes, she is a street car. Insuranced, inspected, emissions and all.

People look at me weird because they think its a drift car (because of the cage) and then they see that it is 2" raised.

Black Knight RX7 FC3S

iTrader: (7)

You already did what other people normally do to lose some weight on the car.
If you want to be drastic, start cutting up the metal on the car. Drift cars Ive seen cut some of the metal from the rear off, and cut off the front radiator support and such, but they also install a beam going across the front.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

the stock door bars are big, but they actually do work, if you crash. one of our drivers put our car into the tire wall and the factory side impact bars actually did all the work. just a data point

you can pull off the silly door moldings, not a big savings, but there is no penalty.

under the hood there are a ton of little brackets that all use 2-4 bolts to attach things, weight savings is small, but if you go thru the car it'll add up

the PS system is porky

texFCturboII

iTrader: (17)

Do you use the headlights? If not, remove them and the motors.
Remove all unnecessary accessories from the engine bay.
Go with a single exhaust, the "flowing better" argument is nixed because you have a collected header. Much weight saved there.
Get a smaller fuel tank, or a fuel cell if possible.
The hatch! I think you would have a hard time finding a Lexan hatch nowadays, it may behoove you to get one made custom (expensive) or maybe come up with a way to seal off the back another way (Truck-a-saurus RX)

fc323

http://www.mazdatrix.com/engpartrace.htm
alluminun housings. Best weight loss there

scrapp

iTrader: (1)

You removed all the tar inside the car, right? My buddy did a throughout job, and had like 3-5 LARGE paint buckets filled. 100lbs total.

The crash guards behind the bumpers? gotta be close to 100lbs?

Cut out the hatch floor and mount a custom fuel cell.
Remove the entire dash, and loom out all the junk wires you dont need. (rewire the whole car so that only what you need works.) I think the dash support is 25lb?

My buddy went on a TOTAL diet on his race/street S4. (while still keeping it looking "street") I think the current weight is somewhere around 2300

(Quite honestly, if you want first hand experience of just HOW, and, HOW MUCH weight you can remove, send a PM to ajhehr. He dont come around often, but I think he will see if he gets a PM.)

BTW cool car.

KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for all the answers.

Let me go one by one.

That is why I thought about gutting the metal from the doors and other areas.


I thought that the door bars would be a big weight saving. So I might get those out of the way since I have the two door cage bars running through it now.

I am going to remove the door moldings as soon as I get another can of paint. One door is rusted underneath......

I need PS for rally... so I cant remove the system.



Its a street car, so I need the headlights.

What accessories could I remove? So far the Air pump and all its crap is being gutted so I can still use the housing as an idler pulley since I've read so much crap about the double pulley having issues with "one pulley being a tiny bit longer than the other"...

I might go with the single exhaust, since your point on flow is very valid.

Also, I am going to look for the fuel tank, but I need something cheap that can go on the outside. I do not want to deal with a fuel cell that would need to be separated from the driver compartment by metal.

Agreed on the difficulty of finding lexan hatches.... (or fiber fenders) specially at good prices... but I will keep lurking around


Need cheap alternatives


What? The tar weighs around 100lbs? That cant be right.
I removed a few big chunks that were half broken and they did not weight much together. I expected it to be 20-30 lbs max. So I did not even bothered with the hassle and extra noise.

Can anybody confirm the weight?

The crash guard is the front bumper beam? I think that is not heavy at all. I thought about removing it, and I saw that it was not heavy. Unless we are talking about different things.

I also thought about removing the entire dash to get to the wires. But the dash will not come out as a single piece due to the bar....
Besides, the RX7 has SUCH A COMPLICATED wiring system that I am afraid of touching anything!!!

I will, however, start removing wiring pertaining to stuff like ABS, speaker doors, rear wiper, and other stuff this car did not come with.


I will try to contact him. I would love if anybody would have done a sticky or tutorial about these steps

Thanks about the compliments on the car. If you want to get more info, you can visit the shop's facebook page. They have the RX7 posted there:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...1&l=65e9bbbff7

I appreciate all the help and info I am going to start researching on all the comments like the front bumper beam, door beams fuel tank, etc... and see what can I get.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

how about removing the motors and crap ~5+ lbs a side, in the very front too, and making a way to have the headlights up manually?

i just put mine back on, and the front bumper reinforcement, can't be more than 10-12lbs. plus its a race car, you WILL hit something someday (or they will hit you)

texFCturboII

iTrader: (17)

As far as the headlights, you could still remove the motors and keep them up, or go with some type of conversion kit?

As far as the accessories to remove in the engine bay, you already mentioned emissions, but what about A/C, Power steering, every single little useless tab and connector, A/C condenser and lines, smaller battery, Charcoal canister, etc...

dwb87

iTrader: (22)

This is actually pretty cool!

I have seen others mention these... but have you removed the A/C and P/S?

You could go with a lightened flywheel and driveshaft. Replace as many stock panels with carbon fiber panels. (If you are getting really nitty gritty and have the money, that is.) - Carbon kevlar seats, maybe a fuel cell, Lexan all around, remove all unnecessary wiring, custom upper and lower intake manifolds. There are tons of little things that will add up to some decent weight. That is why I even mentioned the extra wiring. heh' - Too bad most of my suggestions are pricey. I guess it is all about how serious you are about rally racing.

Better plan: Starve yourself for a few months, remove one lung, remove one kidney, get your appendix removed, tonsils taken out, all teeth removed and replaced with carbon fiber dentures, install that 1,000 BHP Racing Beat race engine, get a full carbon fiber FC chassis and shell, and scotch tape a million dollar bill to the steering wheel. ;-)

KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

I will see if I can do something about the lights motors. It is not a bad idea.

I thought I was right on the bumper reinforcement weight. I have the same idea as you about the crashing, that is why I put it back on.


Conversions for the headlights are pricy. I already looked at them so I can also have better aero with the lights on.

The AC was removed a long time ago Together with all its components.
I need the PS though for tight turns.

What tabs and connectors you mean? I need the connectors for stuff to work and tabs so the connectors dont go loose.... right? Am I loosing something here?

I need economical alternatives If I had money to buy parts of your list I would have done it long time ago.

About your second plan, kind of extreme... but I do go and take a dump before the race for light weight purposes

CrispyRX7

iTrader: (139)

Some light reading material for you. Quite a bit of info on weight removal throughout when I was prepping a car for SCCA racing. At the very end I was at minimum weight for ITS class at the end of a 30 minute race starting with a *full* tank of fuel. At the time this was 2680lb IIRC (I was 200lbs plus gear - helmet, HANS etc) so consider the car at about 2450lbs full wet.

Triple-R: The Budget Race Car

HTH,
Crispy

texFCturboII

iTrader: (17)

It's nice to have PS for parking. Trust me, get a manual rack and you will never look back.

The metal tabs and connectors to components that aren't being used/have been removed.

jackhild59

iTrader: (7)

In these how to save weight threads, I usually tease about dating skinny chicks, or about dumping the fat girl friend. You are married, so I will spare you the jokes.

Besides, any woman that can drive like shown in the pictures would not tolerate such nonsense.

Good Luck with your Rally racing.

-Jack

ForsakenRX7

Theres some fantastic reading on that site . Especially for the newbies around here. Big thumbs up sir.

alexdimen

iTrader: (13)

My rear towing hook(s) could be unbolted on my SE... IIRC.

KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the input guys.

Great read there Crispy. It should be a sticky on the FAQ section of the forums!

Quick question. Since you removed the side moldings, were they just glued to the car? Or do they have any plastic tabs or any other type of hole that will need to be taken care of? Can you also remove the ones from the front and rear bumper? Or are those part of the bumper and not an independent piece....

Thanks!

KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

Oh, BTW, I am also going to do the wiring reduction on the car from the dash back like you did. I was thinking about that for a while, but there are SO MANY connectors back there connected to NOTHING that its taking me a long time to figure out what is important and what isnt.

KAT_Ayanami

iTrader: (1)

I have uploaded 3 pictures where I have questions about what those connectors are. Let me know if anybody has an idea.


1a- What is that small 3 wire connector for? Pwr windows?
2a - Im guessing those three wires connecting to the inside lock is for anti-theft?
3a - That wire that goes on top of the door all the way to the outside lock should also be anti-theft....


1b - What is that connector for? Power something?
2b - I think that is for the anti-theft.


1c - What is that relay for? Defrost?
2c - What is that big connector for?

My car came with NOTHING powered other than the sunroof... (go figure...) So I am thinking about removing anything that is not connected. But I just wanted to make sure before I started pulling wires.

Trust me, I have been looking at wiring diagrams, that is why I have an idea. I just wanted some confirmation.

Thanks!