my quest to 3100lbs!!!
 

car is currently down to 3328 with a 1/3 tank of gas....mind you this is or WAS a FULLY optioned 2000 Z28 from factory body kit to leather....

things currently done to lighten:
full chromoly tubular suspension parts and k member
removed door crash bars
grant 13.5" steering wheel
rear seats and seat belts all removed
spare tire and shit removed
factory monsoon amp removed
AC removed
ABS removed
air pump and PCV shit removed
windshield wipers removed (car doesnt see rain)
front bumper support removed and replaced with a tubular chromo one
about 3 lbs of sheet metal cut out for my standing up radiator "mod"
BS rear draglites with Hoosier QTPs

stuff on the to do list before september/october racing starts:
front skinnies -45 lbs
removed pass side airbag and steel support -30 lbs
rear speed glass -25 lbs
removed 35mm solid chromo front sway for the track -30lbs
corbeau FX1 Pros -30 lbs (pair)

so doing the math that would get me down to 3168...... i dont want to go to a manual rack or loose my stereo the car is still a street car, but what else can i do to loose another 68lbs????? also dont want a speedglass front windshield granted that would yield me another 30 lbs or so... and dont want to do a lightweight brake set up or change my suspension over as my car is mainly for highspeed use not just 1/4 mile..

I would say lose some weight but you're a twig already lol

Heater core? Aluminum rad? Lightweight bellhousing?

Fiberglass hood and maybe door panels???

Due to your history I would leave all crash protection stuff in the car.

maddies car is like 3200 or 3300 with gas and no driver. she has a glass hood, rear seat delete and a few other minor weight reduction mods. her car is an automatic, t top car with 17s. id try a different scale. the only scale ive ever used that i found accurate are the ones at the weigh stations on rt93 between exits 3 & 4. the scale at the track is absolute garbage.

Lightweight battery would be another 15-20lbs depending on what you've got.

If they make a lexan rear hatch it would last longer than a windshield, but I wouldent run lexan on the street, and my car is pretty unbearable in general.

Then the exhaust is often overlooked, you can keep your car pretty quiet if you just run a H pipe immedaitly after the headers, then some mufflers and some dumps, eliminating the exhaust the rest of the way back really lightens things up a bit depending on what your running, and if you run a decent street muffler it doesnt need to be too loud, dumped at a 45 degree angle seems to reduce drone.

My buddy had them as just straight pipes pointing towards the back of the car and it was a lot louder.

Pulling bumper supports all together is a good amount of weight too. I think those things alone will get you there.

If you havent already I'de pull the carpet, I think on the Fbodys the insulation is attached to the carpet as well, that'll lose some good weight, Although the rear seats dont weigh anything and annoyingly the front seats on my buddys camaro that we stripped seemed to be really light too.

Why is that? NED's scale says my ls1 rx7 is 2800lbs. Which unfortunatly seems high but the car has always run like its 200-300lbs lighter than that scale says so I didnt worry about it much.

I would like to know what it actually weighs though

Yeah I hope you aren't planning on driving this thing on the road, you are going to get yourself killed if you get hit

because the scale is never calibrated...it always reads waaay higher than it really is...added over 250lbs to mine when i weighed it there.. Like Joe said stop off at a weigh station on a highway...those scales HAVE to be accurate...so if u want to know what it really weighs i suggest doin that

lmao

ive always gotten different readings on the tracks scale each time i went, im not talking 60lbs difference more like +/- a couple hundred lbs. i remember times the scale at the track was reading weight when there was nothing even on it, i dont think they calibrate that thing very often. as maddie said we weighed her car the night before the track at the weigh station and then when we were at the track she put it on their scale and the reading was alot different. i weigh all my stuff at the weigh stations on 93, ill stop at the north bound one check the weight and then go up to exit 4 and turn around to head south bound and stop at that one to just to be sure, but both scales have always given me the same reading. there are plenty of good scales in new england, the ones on 93 happen to be close to me so i use those. id suggest stopping by scrap metal places, transfer stations, etc and ask if theyll let you put your car on the scale just make sure its been certified or calibrated recently. i will even get out of the car to see if the scale drops the amount of my body weight, another indication of how precise/accurate a scale is.

haha but IVE only crashed one and was being stupid....!!! the 2nd was due to someone else driving my car...(although it is still a string of badluck which hopefully is over with) but yea front tubular bumper is actually surprisingly strong as i had one in the previous wreck which was horrendous kid litterally broke everything you can imagine yet the support held up good! side impact bars...eh getting t boned is likely to never happen im way more cautious at intersections then when im walking....

as for scales ya it was weighed at the track.. WITHOUT me could be more could be less but if your saying maddies car is less than that then i can only assume mine must be REALLY light... lightweight carpet ya i forgot to add that to the list to be done... already have a glass hood, have a "lighjtweight SFI bellhousing which is actually 15lbs heavier than the factory aluminum one and my subframes add weight but this has all been weited already... still i cant see being lighter than what the scale said. these cars are pigs but hey if i am then AWESOME!

where can i find a truck scale that is actually open and functioning??

EDIT: where on RT93???

Wow that a big weight loss.

My car is 3558 with me in it. I need to put my car on slimfast or some diet.:D

<< 3300lbs raceweight. remove everything u can live without. and hope u dont wreck it. agian. drive smart

I keep seeing you talk about this stand up radiator mod. Any pics and/or what exactly are you cutting out?

I'll take pics when I get home from work in the AM but basically I cut out the underside of my upper rad support and cut a section out on the lower so that my griffin can stand straight up and tucked away under the upper support piece...all for room for twin turbos in the near future looks damn good too!

did ya remove the inner fender wells?
did ya remove rear seats?
also taking a big dump before weigh in helps!:funnyshit:

in his original post it says rear seats deleted. inner fender wells arent worth removing, they are plastic and light.

Good to know about the NED scale! I was shocked whenI weighed my car there, it was almost 3,800 lbs. with me in it, and I only weigh about 160.

I don't get the obsession with weight loss for a streetcar. For a track only car fine, but you do this to a streetcar and get one that's alot less comfortable to drive and only marginally faster. Not worth it IMO, but hey, it's your car, and I don't have to ride in it with no AC!

You'll have to pry my AC from my cold, dead hands. No way in hell I'd ever yank my AC.

hahaha im the same way!
i just did minor shit and it got me to 3300lbs and i didnt sacrafice anything really but a back seat which i didnt use anyways lol i wont get into taking out saftey shit really until its just a track car but everyone is diff...People want to get the best times out of their cars that they can and weight reduction is a huge thing. Thats y u see people taking out seats, systems, spares etc at the track... every 100 lbs is a 10th in the 1/4

ya my car being slammed and with rod end suspension the ride isnt what it used to be so i dont really care about ride quality...gotta sacrifice comfort for performance... but hey i bet youll feel safer (ignoring the fact that airbags and some saftey shit is removed but ill have a cage soon haha) in my car goin 160 than any other "street" f body... everyone whos had the chance to actually feel my car at speed is in awe and so am i everytime... seriously glued to the road over bumps dips anything! i love it! but im not saying i ever go above 65:drivingwheel: havent gone past 170 yet... i need room!

Yeah, I get you, it's just not worth it to me.

I'd rather have a car with AC and a full/comfortable interior than one with no AC and a stripped out interior that's a couple of tenths faster.

I was actually thinking of losing my back seat, mainly because I hardly ever use it and removing it will add a little more cargo capacity.

I'd never pull the carpet and stuff like that though.

I went the other way. Added about 50 lbs of dynamat. Cadillac quiet inside now.

If this is a DD, I'd advise against a STRICT diet.. You'll regret it when you can't hear shit after an hour in the car. It might be fun at first, but after a while it isn't. Yes my car is loud, is it fun to drive?? Not for more than an hour. I've gone through three sets of speakers and a head unit in 7 years. But if this is a dedicated track car, trailered and what not, than just GUT it.. I mean GUT it.. Long story short, I polished up my AC components and reinstalled it and spent abotu 6 months trying to get that car quiet in the cabin again. Gutted the interior, dynamat and roll-on truck bed liner.

Here's a list, but not the one I was looking for..
http://www.ls1tech.com/forums/drag-r...tion-list.html

see i view my car as a "mans car" its not "gutted" but she is stripped down of certain things... car is loud as fuck currently so no matter what i do nothing is gonna overdue my exhaust note...when i go boosted and quiet down a bit maybe ill regret some things but its doubtful. like i said my car is a mans car dont need any creature comforts it is to me a race car that is driven on the street. its solid and drives/handles tight as hell. granted its def not a car built for these new england roads but it is managable and is everything i could ask for. but that just me....we all mod our own cars to our own liking right?

ok so its all together and you cant see EXACTLY whats been removed but from the pictures you can get an idea....

front bumper cutout and tubular bumper reinforcement installed...she is now a front breather
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...5/103_0001.jpg
can kinda see all the romm it gave me and how nice and tucked up the new griffin is under the rad support. yea still have my stock fans but till i get the flexalite thinner ones these will do
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...5/103_0003.jpg
and this you can see where i cut out a notch in the upper support to allow access to the rad cap. the rest of the upper sheetmetal was left so the rad is tucked under it nicely when the air lid and shit is removed
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l1...5/103_0002.jpg

Your positive terminal is just exposed like that?

ya for the time being...i gotta re do that shit properly

I thought of my car as a "man's car" too when I was doing all that, but it seriously got old after about a year.

For what it's worth, I wouldn't say my car is exactly "girlie" :flashing:

Yikes change that positive battery cable.God way to solder large diameter wire is with a propane torch to heat it up.. That seems to be the only way I can find to solder them together, works well too.

I believe they make copper crush sleeves which would be a good start, then heat up the sleeve, feed in the solder let cool and make sure to insulate with a couple layers of insulation, like heat shrink tube to start with and then followed up by electrical tape.


At least for now get some liquid electrical tape from home depot or something and put a few coats on it.

Get rid of the driver's seat and replace it with a lighter one. Welds are a lot lighter than stock wheels but Bogarts are even lighter. The AC ducting under the dash is surprisingly heavy. I'm running a Borla XR1 muffler right off the Y-pipe. The rest of the exhaust out the back can weigh you down about another 20 lbs. And someone mentioned the carpet. They sell a lightweight carpet that'll shed off a lot of weight. A little noiser though.

Start pulling interior panels and go to town with a sawzall! Wahoo!