Ever wonder how much weight savings can be obtained by removing all the air bags and install a Momo steering wheel? Just over 11 pounds

May not seem much to you guys I know but we expect to save approx this much weight in the areas below.

Airbags, steering wheel 11lbs
Seat brackets and seats, 25lbs at least
no rear speakers, 2lbs
engine cover, misc brackets 2lbs
glass top 45lbs minimum, maybe 50
hood 12lbs
hatch 25lbs approx
sound deadening 15lbs we will remove stock and do our own
middle rear seat belt 4lbs rear seat and belts can be removed for racing
stock radio 4lbs
spare tire, jack, etc 35lbs
exhaust system 20lbs
ABS 20lbs approx
cut off excess from all bolts,
brackets, misc 10lbs

Unsprung weight
Coilovers 8lbs
brakes 10lbs approx
tires/wheels/lugs 12lbs

260 lbs, that my friends is a huge amount of weight off the car!

Our turbo and computer, audio system will only add back around 100lbs

We will have a net loss of approx 160 lbs!

That my friends in the performance world is huge

Rick

 

Its not really something youd want to do to an everyday driver, but 100 lbs = 10 hp so thats about a 16 - 20 hp increase.

 

Get a new girlfriend with a nice body........120 to 150 down to 100-105. That can be a saving of 15 to 50 pounds!!!

 

I'd be happy to lose 10 lbs on my body, let alone 160 on my car. Let's do the math
tC = 2900 lbs. weight reduction -160
me = 172 lbs. weight reduction (same ratio as the tC) = 9.48 lbs.
Yea, I would definatly like that

 

oh also, 2900 (weight of tC) / 160 hp gives us a 18.125 lbs per hp. So the 100lbs off is only 5.5 hp freed up.

mind all of you I did the calculations in my head.

just a random fact: A suzuki hayabusa has around 160 whp while only weighing 478 lbs. That's 2.98 lbs per hp!

 

dieting is free, and you save money not eating.

 

If I was into drag racing the weight savings would not be worth the cost, autocross and road track use as well as fast back road crusing, the weight is very important.

We are building a car that will handle really well, stop well, do everything really well.

It is not about the percieved HP gain, we will take care of that with a turbo anyway

Our main racing will be autocross, sorry, no motorcyle can do that anywhere nearly as fast as a well prepared car

Rick

 

ah! Yes! Thank you! Now I have fodder to use to argue against bikes! Hahaha! Your gonna have one helluva car man! Can't wait to see the end result!

 

one question. how is coilovers unsprung weight?

 

why would you wanna take off the hood, glass roof, and the wheels and tires? kinda strips the whole car.

 

he wants to race it

 

260? That's it? Forgive me for being more surprised than impressed. I dropped an easy ~200lbs off of my old del Sol without even replacing any body panels, removing any interior, etc. The Darksol guy got his VTEC under 2k-- around 1980lbs, a full 500lbs lighter than stock-- and he hadn't even gone to tubular lower arms (another 50-70 lbs off).

I scaled in at 2218, compared to the 2414 stock weight. Street curb weight was 2440 loaded, with full audio (close to 100lbs), tank of gas (almost 85lbs right there), added rear swaybar (8lbs) etc. Manufacturer stated curb weights are iffy at best.

Thinking further, perhaps your numbers are a little too conservative. My OEM steering wheel, airbag, pass. airbag and module weighed 27lbs-- the aftermarket hub and wheel were less than 5. Hell, the basic, circa-'95 cruise control system weighed close to 13lbs all told.

I'm not removing any weight from my tC-- I've already packed on about 60lbs of audio, with a bit more to come.

 

well, im not planning on racing my car....i got too many tickets. Plus i got a bike. im gonna fix up my car for cruising and long drives like vegas.

 

600RR. . . nice!

 

hey TINY!! would you by chance need a swingarm stand for your bike? ive got a lockhart phillips paddle stand (used to change tires/adjust the chain/etc.) PM me or call me up at 916-717-8664

 

i got a pit bull stand already. thanks anyways. you can go to 600rr.net and sell it there. i go by the same name.

 

Good question, I guess coilovers would be partially unsprung weight then, any experts on here care to enlighten us?? Actually the weight of the coilovers are felt with the movement of the suspenion. since they are bolted to the car on one end, I suppose only part could be considered unsprung, never really thought of this before


tiny, to replace them with lighter components;)

Dr Iso, what did you remove then to take off the weight? Maybe a cast iron manifold? certainly the exhaust could be lightened. Did you actually weigh it stock or use factory info? Just curious, I have not weighed my car, too late to do it stock now. Some parts are not as heavy as they were a few years ago. I weighed the steering wheel and air bags in seperate pieces on a gram scale ( I used to race bicycles and built a 20.4 lb full suspension mountain bike back in 97, why I have a gram scale

To save that much with lower arms means the stock ones were terribly heavy to begin with, suprised as I have never worked on a car(worked on many but not Honda's, that had very heavy arms unless it was a big domestic, only a couple of times, not fun to work on antiquated newer cars.


I am quoting the weight saved, not the weight of each item I removed. The stock steering wheel with air bag only weighs 1.91 lbs less than the Momo Race and hub combination I replaced it with. I may search for an aluminum hub, this one is quite heavy but the stock setup came in at 6.245 lbs which is fairly low to begin with.



tiny, I am not talking about street racing, no tickets on a track

I like to build different kinds of cars, I had a Datsun 710 wagon back in the early 80's that weighed in a 1900 and some odd pounds, alot of mods, alot of money, alot of fun up in the mountains suprising "sports cars" with my wagon
I removed the AC but the biggest single item was the bumpers from back then, I built some small diameter tubular ones and save over 70 lbs on each end of the car!

Not a huge savings on wheel and tire weight since I went to 235/40/17 and as with most super high performance tires, they are a bit on the heavy side do to all that tread depth and super stiff sidewalls, shaved would save quite a few pounds I imagine but these need to last on road trips.

My 510 Datsun weighed 1700lbs way back in 1973. It was pretty well gutted.

The tC is a very stout car, the body structure is where the majority of weight is, the rest of the car parts are basically pretty darn lite, hard to improve upon them.

Rick

 

Dont think so if for everyday drive. That little hp increase, but u got to take out all these features???? !

Unless you are going to make it as a show car

 

how about fix it tickets?

 

if you're removing that much stuff, might as well pull the power steering and the A/C. . . that'll get rid of a decent amount. . . interior trim, plastic, strip it naked.