car weight

it is my understanding that a relatively cheap and easy way to greatly improve handling, acceleration, and overall driveability is to decrease the weight of one's vehicle; however, my problem is i dont know of any ways to do this beyond replacing certain components with carbon fiber and so forth. Can anyone give me guidance on how to drop the weight of my 6th gen. civic and maintain a street car feel? thank you.

derek

it is my understanding that a relatively cheap and easy way to greatly improve handling, acceleration, and overall driveability is to decrease the weight of one's vehicle; however, my problem is i dont know of any ways to do this beyond replacing certain components with carbon fiber and so forth. Can anyone give me guidance on how to drop the weight of my 6th gen. civic and maintain a street car feel? thank you.

derek

if you take out the drivetrain and suspension it will be lighter and safer in the long run.....

but that aside, there is actually little 'fat' on todays cars, such that removal wont compromise safety and comfort (you can take out the AC and all the other seats, but then you are left with only yourself sweating inside....)

Take out the dounut and jack, also put in less fuel like half a tank, instead of 3/4 or full.

Taking out the the spare and jack and filling the car half full will decrease the weight of the car no doubt. However in a FWD civic which has a decided front weight bias already leading to mild-moderate understeer, your best bet is to relocate some of your weight in addition to removing it. One popular practice is to move the battery to the trunk. This doesn't remove any weight but it does help the weight balance of the car. Simply removing the spare and filling up halfway in a civic will probably only make your understeer even more pronounced - although it may help a bit in straightline acceleration/deceleration.

Get racing seat(s), gut the doors ( see if you can get manual windows ), take out the rear seat, relocate battery to the trunk ( i saw in a sport compact magazine an s2000 with all the fluids in the trunk i think ) but that is more for weight distribution, take out every peice of plastic and carpeting and anything else that isn't supporting weight or giving structural rigidity, don't race with your subs in if you have them, you can also use a torch and cut off your spare tire well and just weld a peice of steel or aluminum over the hole. You can remove your power steering and that wil get rid of drag on your engine and weight from the fluid, everything having to do with your air condidtioning, you can replace glass with lexan ( however you spell that ).