lightening your car - anybody ever tried this?

airmenair said:
You could start here: http://www.optimabatteries.com/ I'm not sure what the weight is compared to a stock battery but you could do a little research into them.
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I found their Yellow Top model, which looks quite good. The figures say it weighs 13 kgs, compared to about 20 of a normal battery.

Gatecrasher said:
Reduce unsprung weight. You should be doing that before anything else.
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I know, I learned that the hard way when I put on the above 8 x 18 inch wheels. They look good, but the loss of comfort, acceleration and the increased fuel consumption is horrid. So the smallest rims I can get seem to be 7 x 16 inch. I'm currently thinking about OZ Ultraleggera, arguably the lightest rims you can get, but the minimum size is 8 x 17 inch ... not ideal.

EDIT: Oh by the way, I got rid of the backrest and some damping behind it today, also took the damping off the rear doors, swapped the power amp for the subwoofer for an even smaller one (2.9 now vs. 3.9 kgs before) and finally changed the enclosured woofer for the very light free air model.
 
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I'd take time and look into smoothing out the front underbody, area in-front of tires, and overall underbody section with some removable but effective Aerodynamic work, some Austrailian magazine improved a Prius's (old) fuel economy by 12% just by fabricating a smooth front undertray. TheDguy had the link last i remember.

I have seen cars that have been dramatically lightened, but its hard to put my finger on what the experts do, the best example (i reference this guy alot, because he truly is a god among men) is Steve Hoelscher, who somehow got over 800lbs out of a mki MR2 (about 2300lbs stock to 1600lbs race) Furthermore the car looked almost completely stock from the outside, he even opted to keep the side skirts just because he like the looks. From what he did say he mentioned the important of completely ripping the whole car apart, and then weighing everything and rebuilding section that can be made lighter, i know one surprising area he lost weight was in wiring, but i suppose all of this is rather unpractical.


PS: look up Odyssey batteries, for a small engine you can get a 15lbs dry cell made for motorcycles, i had one in my MR2 and it worked until i left it in the car through the whole winter (without running) so i would recommend it, but i don't know if it can handle a V6/i6
 
Found this in terms of batteries, an interesting read. The lightest one they recommend for all season daily driver use is the Odyssey PC545MJ, which weighs 12.6 lbs. They also talk about the incredibly light Braille B106, but only recommend it for racing setups. The Odyssey is a bit low on Ah however, so I might go with something in the middle, like the Braille B2015 (15 lbs). I put a random standard car battery onto the scale today by the way, and it was 46 lbs. There's quite some weight to save here...
 
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Can start cutting holes in the non visable body work to remove some metal :D

Just be careful not to cut anything vital or remove so much as to weaken the car.
 
p0w3r said:
really? i never knew that...thats so weird, then why do cars like the lighter Mitsubishi Evo RS have manual windows:?
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I don't know about the Evo RS but WRC cars have electric windows so he may have a point about them being lighter.
 
Quality brake kits form the likes of AP racing should save weight and substantially improve braking. It's a win-win situation.
 
Solberg said:
Quality brake kits form the likes of AP racing should save weight and substantially improve braking. It's a win-win situation.
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The original brakes are pretty small to start with, and braking already improves with lower weight. I think a better (and usually larger) brake would not be lighter, would it?
 
Pull out your interior and carpet, then use dry ice on the sound deadening that is attatched to the metal, then smash it off with a hammer.
 
then get rid of the doors internals, cut off the support beams, and weld it shut.

then get rid of the soft-top

...oh wait :)
 
Okay, so I browsed the net for light wheels and tires. The status quo:

rims: OZ Ultraleggera (silver or graphite): 17 x 7 os 37
tires: Pirelli P Zero Nero 205 / 45 R 17

The idea is to get a very light combination that still looks good on the car. The Ultraleggeras obviously are light, and the P Zero Nero is said to be a very good sports tire that's pretty light at the same time. I'm not 100% positive that I could get these through the T?V though - should be fine, but you never know.

205 seem to be a bit narrow (my car has 205ers as standard, the M-model had 235ers). But I've driven some 205ers now, and the grip is more than enough, while a narrower tire will surely have a (positive) impact on rolling resistance and therefore fuel consumption and performance.
 
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xe2bls said:
then get rid of the doors internals, cut off the support beams, and weld it shut.

then get rid of the soft-top

...oh wait :)
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i know you were probably just a joking, but i would seriously recommend against EVER cutting the safety beams out of the doors. Usually they weigh no more then 5lbs each door and their literally the difference between living or dying in any side impact over 15mph, i.e. 90% of driving conditions.

However lightening safety equipment isn't bad at all. VAT probably won't like this, but weigh your bumper supports, some of the older cars use Steel supports that can weight 90lbs+ on each end of the car (the little old MR2 had these) if you can screw in some newer (fabricated if need be) high strength Aluminium beams you could loose probably 100lbs right there without sacrificing safety, furthermore its weight thats up high and out at the edges of the chassi (i.e. "dirty" weight.) May not pass VAT, but do they really rip apart the bumpers to see what the internals look like?!? And or you could just install the stock crap a week before the inspection, i would say 100lbs is worthwhile. If your comfortable with Aluminimum the other area that can have really nice gains is any of the suspension control arms/swomg arms/wishbones etc (assuming their not aluminum already.) Hell their might even be products to convert your suspension components to lightweight aluminum for your BMW, i know when i sold the MR2 they were just starting to make them.
 
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My friend had a Ford Festiva. he made it as light as possible by replacing all the windows with lexan, cutting all the guts out of the doors so there was just the outer skin and then I believe it made some "strategic" holes in the frame. I told him he was going to die. He dropped in a B6T mazda motor and made like 220whp. Retarded, but awesome.

Edit: Found pics;

DSCF0401-1.jpg

DSCF0397.jpg
 
Nabster said:
I don't know that I'd be tossing out my spare and jack and tools for the sake of some extra yards per gallon, but that's not my decision here.
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I have the same reservations, and unfortunately they don't make runflats for pickup trucks.

C53A_4G63T said:
My friend had a Ford Festiva. he made it as light as possible by replacing all the windows with lexan, cutting all the guts out of the doors so there was just the outer skin and then I believe it made some "strategic" holes in the frame. I told him he was going to die. He dropped in a B6T mazda motor and made like 220whp. Retarded, but awesome.

Edit: Found pics;

DSCF0401-1.jpg

DSCF0397.jpg
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Awesome, indeed.
 
I didn't have the time to take more parts out in the last days (had more ideas of what to get rid of though), but here's a little update on how it drives.

It definitely has become louder in the cabin, but removing a lot of dampening materials, that was to be expected. It's not too loud though, you just notice at high speeds that there is more road noise from the back (where I removed the most).

Driving the car, I can feel that the engines job has become a little easier though. I wouldn't exactly describe it as nippy, but it has become noticeably less sluggish in cornering as well as accelerating.

About the fuel economy I'm not sure yet. It has increased, but I've mostly been on the Autobahn instead of the city this weekend, so it's only natural it uses less fuel. The next days will show if the diet had a real impact on fuel economy. I do think so, I'm just not sure how much it will be. I'll also keep throwing things out, so there's still some distance to cover.
 
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Replace every non-load bearing screw with aluminium and load bearing screws with titanium ones. I bet you could save another 40-60kg or so. But that should really be the last option as the costs and time necessary for doing that are outrageous. At 1-8? per aluminium screw and 6-20? per titanium screw, it's not exactly the cheapest way. Or get a titanium exhaust system, 10kg less and rust-free. I could go on forever but you would be looking at spending a new car's worth of money...

Btw you can see how much every part of your car weights here and prioritize. http://de.bmwfans.info/original/E36/Lim/323i-M52/ECE/L/M/1996/02/
 
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Do you really want to strip out your daily driver so it has all thee discomfort and noise of a racecar? ok....
 
edkwon said:
Do you really want to strip out your daily driver so it has all thee discomfort and noise of a racecar? ok....
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If you would have read the thread, you'd know I'm not doing that. :p

DarkReaper said:
Btw you can see how much every part of your car weights here and prioritize. http://de.bmwfans.info/original/E36/Lim/323i-M52/ECE/L/M/1996/02/
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Excellent resource, thanks! I'm going to spread out some rep for the helpers later on, the thread will be going for some more time. :)
 
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the Interceptor said:
If you would have read the thread, you'd know I'm not doing that. :p
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I know thats not what you are doing, but its kind of directed towards everyone else who thinks the idea of stripping out a daily driver road car is 'cool'.
 
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