I'm a little late to this thread but this is a bit of an obsession for me. To be frank, our cars are pretty damn light. (Especially the early cars) Here's a couple ideas with weights based on my car BEFORE I cut the floor/firewall, etc. out:
Swap the saginaw; Mine weighed in at 115 lbs. (The T5 I built is 73 lbs. wet)
Scrapping out the sound insulation: I got 17 lbs. from my car. (WOW!)
Swapped the Appleton Rack (alluminum, 8lbs.) for the gear box. (Stock ≈16 lbs.)
Hollow sway bars. The solid 1 1/4 front bar weighs a SHIT-TON. Like 30 lbs. or some crazy number like that. I'll pull it down and weigh it. The hollow bar I got was only 7 lbs.
These mods yielded the following numbers:
My grand total: 2616 lbs.
Dry total (less driver): 2356 lbs.
LF: 712 RF: 688 Front: 1400
LR: 608 RR: 608 Rear: 1216
Final distribution: 53.5% front, 46.5% rear.
These numbers could be improved by swapping glass. That rear hatch weighs a ton (50-60 lbs. with glass); It's weight in the rear but also adds to yaw… 6 o' 1… Probably worth ditching the glass at least. The side-impact beams in the door are probably worth some. I'm building in side-impact into the cage so not needed for me... The window cranks are pretty damn light already but I guess you could pull them and do that Hemi Dart, seatbelt strap clip-on-the-bottom-of-the-door trick. Not sure it's worth it.
Then I cut the floor/firewall… pretty much front fenders back; Weighed 273 lbs. (this includes the rear inner fender wells). Removing bumpers, especially on the later cars is worth a LOT. The early bumpers aren't very heavy. I'm planning on keeping a bunch of them. I'll have to weigh them with brackets again. I can't find the reference in my notes.
I was going to list drivetrain and suspension components but I found that upgrades tend to be a lateral move, if you're careful with what components you buy. For me, every component I wanted to upgrade was bigger, lighter for the size but basically the same weight in the end.
Then I built the roll cage and frame rail supports; Added 200 lbs. back on.
vegaCage01.JPG
OK. the next thing is going to sound douchey but loosing driver weight can yield a shit ton of weight. I lost 20 lbs. off the car that way! Nice. Means a lot for those guys who are working really hard to get a few pounds here and there off the car.
The obsessive part for me has been weight distribution. That was the main reason for cutting the firewall to move the engine back 6". That moved everything (ME) back too. The rear IRS added about 80lbs. Mostly in that massive Rx7 center section. What a tank. I also built a mount for the alternator off the diff to move that back. Since I'm using a manual rack and a remote electric water pump, that officially removed all the accessories off the engine. It looks weird with just the harmonic balancer hanging off the front. LOL! I figured I could use aluminum for the floors and such since I've built support extrinsic from it.
I'm really hoping I can get the car under 2500 lbs. with me in it... With the stock Corvette LS1 making 350hp/350tq (based on stock flywheel numbers); That should run pretty well!
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