obcessed with weight reduction

I am obcessed with weight reduction.What is a good way to reduce my cars weight without sacrificing the looks of a typical street car? Get a racing steering wheel? How much do those differ from the weight of stock? I am also thinking about getting trim for my dash and shift knob. should i go with carbon fiber, or aluminum? Does it make a difference in weight?

Don't waste your time, the weight savings of items like Carbon fiber shift knobs.. or dash inserts is nothing. Really its so minimal it's a joke.

Unless you rip everything out of your interior, you wont see a huge gain in weight savings. Even then, you may of only lightened the car a 100lbs... If that.

if youre gonna worry about stuff like the weight of your shift nob then you might as well avoid racing on a full stomack. or even go on a diet yourself.

So your car is a bloated bastard also,huh? Just kidding, but here's a list of stuff off the top of my head that nips and tucks at a car's weight problem.

-Fiberglass or Carbon Fiber hood
-Carbon Fiber doors(don't do this on a street car unless a roll cage is in there)
-Carbon Fiber front fenders
-Carbon Fiber trunk lid or hatchpiece
-Aftermarket lightweight wheels
-Lightweight Acrylic windows/rear hatch
-Streetable racing seats
-Lightened Flywheel
-Lightened driveshaft
-Sport Compact battery
-Lighter exhaust system

Most of all,try not to have a wall of subs in your back seat area or an amp rack that motorizes up and out or your trunk-ALL WEIGHT
That's all I can think of for now...but that should get you going

It might help to know what kind of car you have too.

you're talking about adding a carbon fiber trim kit.
which would mean, adding weight. even if it's a couple ounces, it's more than the car was before.

why not light weight wheels, ditching your seats.
you're obsessed with weight reduction, and you're thinking about your steering wheel...

replace your D15 with either a Gallo 12 or a Gallo 24. MUCHO lighter. Then add some lightweight altezza tail lights, and lightweight hyperwhite headlamps. Replace your stock hood squirters with the lighted ones - much lighter. Remove one of your windshield wipers as well. Cutting your springs will also shave a few pounds. Also replace your factory honda emblems with super street emblems. hope this is helpful.

Get rid of :

power steering
ABS
airbags
electric windows and locks
interior money is better spent on lightweight seats (I just bought 2 and I am saving 40 lbs total).

Troll alert :uhoh: :uhoh:

replace your D15 with either a Gallo 12 or a Gallo 24. MUCHO lighter. Then add some lightweight altezza tail lights, and lightweight hyperwhite headlamps. Replace your stock hood squirters with the lighted ones - much lighter. Remove one of your windshield wipers as well. Cutting your springs will also shave a few pounds. Also replace your factory honda emblems with super street emblems. hope this is helpful.



Wow! why would you spend so much cutting all the weight. I hope your joking with the emblems too. he would have better results just gutting the inside and it wouldnt cost that much or anything.

i dunno, i think he was serious about the emblems...

replace your D15 with either a Gallo 12 or a Gallo 24. .



I didn't know Pizza places made engines. :disappoin

yeah. i like mine with mushrooms and canadian bacon. i didn't mean to piss anyone off. i just saw the opportunity so i snatched it.

on the honest note, i'd spend my money adding power first, then lightening. it's a give and take thing in a stret car - sure, ditching the interior may make it lighter, but also it will have poor insulation, and what will the ladies think when you're out on a date and your car is soooo loud b/c of no carpet or sound deadening? not to mention that although functional, its not too classy looking.

I have a 99 eclipse Gst....Ive read that it ways approximately 2970 pounds. bt yea like B rock said a gallo 12...right...someones been watching 2 fast 2 furious too much....j/k...but yea like B rock said I wanna keep the car looking legit because its just an economy car for now.....but the race seats and race wheel sounds good...any others?

In addition to your race seats and race wheel, get a race hood and some race wheels. Then you can race.

I didn't know Pizza places made engines. :disappoin
i love it, lol lol lol.

I have a 99 eclipse Gst....Ive read that it ways approximately 2970 pounds. bt yea like B rock said a gallo 12...right...someones been watching 2 fast 2 furious too much....j/k...but yea like B rock said I wanna keep the car looking legit because its just an economy car for now.....but the race seats and race wheel sounds good...any others?

for the price of the seats/wheels, why not jus upgrade ur turbo? u'll see MUCH bigger differences than the 40-50 lbs u MIGHT save. com'n man...think logically...

for my weight reduction efforts, I removed the rear seats and all carpet aft of the front seats.
Next, I ditch the subwoofers that I have (I put them in when not racing), and anything not bolted down. (spare tire, jack, etc.) my sparcos are lightweight as well, saving some.
fiberglass is the way to go for hoods and fenders. it is about 80-90% as light as carbon fiber and WAY cheaper.
racing wheels will not help acceleration all that much, but they will help handling because they free up what's called "unsprung weight".

light weight wheels don't help acceleration?
yeah, they do...

it's a long explanation, but less rotational weight means that braking and acceleration are easier.
it takes less effort to spin, or slow, the wheel/tire combo, meaning that you can stop faster, and go faster. trust me.
that's why light weight wheels are preferred by racers.

fiberglass is the way to go for hoods and fenders. it is about 80-90% as light as carbon fiber and WAY cheaper.
fiberglass is not that light, in order to have enugh strength for the hood or whatever to hold its shape and not crack it would need prrobally need 4 or 5 layers of mat which ends up being almost 1/4 inch thick. for a fiberglass part to have a similar weight to carbon fiber it would have to be like 3/32" thick and it would be full of dimels and look like crap not to mention be extremely weak. the benefit of carbon fiber is that it is very light and stronger than fiberglass. the only use for fiberglass on a car in my opinion would to fabricate parts, not foe weight reduction.


however if you are talking about a big peice of american steel where the panels are like 1/8' thick it would probally be lighter than that but still no rival for carbon fiber

buy type-R stickers!!! it will fix every thing!!

lol j/k
go after the wheels and hood and tear out that carpet, and seats that you dont used... one seat for you to sit in but hey you are the only one seat but you will be lighter. get rid of the windshield washer fluid tank you dont need that... you dont need a spare tire. and so on

fiberglass is not that light, in order to have enugh strength for the hood or whatever to hold its shape and not crack it would need prrobally need 4 or 5 layers of mat which ends up being almost 1/4 inch thick.

funny, but my friend's hood on his 73 nova (that runs 11's) weighs all of 5 lbs. and is fiber glass. 1/4" thick. it's not super stiff or anything, but it holds it's shape, and is held on with dzus fasteners.

it's not something that i'd run on my street car, but hell, the fiberglass hood that i had on my truck before i got the one i have now was lighter than stock, and it was pretty beefy.

lighter than stock yes (on a nova or truck), lighter than carbon no. i can only speek from what i know i guess, i have worked with a lot of fibergalss and it weighs up

most fiberglass hoods are about 1-2 lbs more than carbon fiber.
not worth the extra 100-200 bucks if you ask me.
the difference is even smaller on smaller cars (duh).
oh, and I said lighter wheels won't help acceleration MUCH. of course they will help, but you will notice a much larger difference taking 100lbs off your car, then taking 20-30lbs off your wheels (total)

wrong, well not completely...
there's some serious math problems that have been done to show what taking 20 lbs. off your wheels will do to your acceleration and braking, as well as what that equates to in centrifugal weight. it's more than you think.

taking 100lbs. off is one thing, on stock wheels. but if you put lighter wheels on, with that 100lbs. taken off, you're going to go faster. guaranteed.
now, 20lb. lighter wheels alone, will not equal the 100lb. drop... but put em together...

lighter than stock yes (on a nova or truck), lighter than carbon no.
so, before carbon fiber came around, what do you think that everything was made out of?
in most drag circles, the bodies are still made of glass. why? b/c it's just as light as carbon fiber. guaranteed. carbon fiber bodies are nice b/c they're stronger, but for weight, it's about the same.

you've worked with fiberglass, great. have you worked with what i've seen?

i'll bet that a QUALITY glass hood (oem style) for a civic weighs, at most, the same as an OEM style cf hood. if not, the weight is still less than stock. and the price is less.

so for that extra 200 bucks, you get 1-2 more lbs. weight reduction? woohoo.
granted, i'm getting a cf hood for my car, but still. i'll be the first to admit that i'm doing it b/c i like the look of cf.

but if it were a money issue, i'd have a glass hood made.

A briggs&Stratton engine would save a lot of weight over that 4 banger :)

Man do you have the wrong type of car if you're worried about weight, eclipses don't have the best power to weight ratio.

Carbon fiber has definate advantages over fiberglass in strength and durability. It's also slightly lighter. The thing is, a hood does not need to be exceptionally stiff, if you have a lightweight metal frame in the hood, you can use the original hood latch, and still come out up to 40lbs lighter than a stock hood.

My 924 has a 40lb steel hood, I can replace it with a glass hood that weighs 10lbs with a metal frame, latch assembly and paint. That's 30lbs off the front end. With a carbon fiber hood, I could spend $300 more and get a 7lb hood. 3lbs for $300? No way, I could do my bumpers for that much and get another 50lbs of weight savings. So 80lbs or 33lbs for the same money... Tough choice :grinno:

You guys are a bunch of amateurs...you want o get lighter....just get some balloons fill them with helium and your good to go.




me so Smrt :icon16:

I agree with using 'glass for weight reduction on body panels. Carbon fiber is a great material if you can afford it. But that's a pretty big "if".

Also, there's some old tricks to use on stuff that's steel if you're really dead serious.

For instance, an old school Trans-Am trick was to cut a rectangular section out of the roof about two inches in from the edges of all the windows. After you did that, you welded in new steel that was thinner than the OEM steel. This saves about 20-40 lbs depending on the roof and the thickness of steel you go to. In fact, one of the most hilarious tall tales in Trans-Am history revolves around this method of weight reduction and Parnelli Jones's 1969 Boss 302 Mustang.

As the story goes, Parnelli was sending the car through tech inspection at Road America when the official noticed all the ballast Parnelli was using to make weight. He looked over the car, then sent the car to the scales where it still came up 20lbs under. The tech official poured over the car trying to find alloy parts or other such illegal modifications to figure out how Parnelli made it so light. Finally, he gave up and set his clipboard and walkie-talkie on the roof to talk to Parnelli. Just as he did this, the roof dented inwards about an inch and a half, much to Parnelli's chargrin.

Good times.

Another weight reduction to look into, if there's a speed shop in your area that does machining and such, is acid dipping. What that does is dunks panels into a highly corrosive acid that eats away at the metal. It's a good way to strip dozens of pounds off a car if you're willing to give it a go. Just be prepared for large panel gaps and lots of rattling afterwards as nothing comes out as big as it was before afterwards.

Krnracer already said... Get more power.. you'll probaly notice it more before you notice a 100lb weight loss.