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As I have discussed elsewhere in this website, I am a big fan of Colin Chapman’s famous mantra “add lightness.”
Carving weight out of a car improves everything about it: acceleration, braking, handling, fuel consumption, total load of Murphy’s Irish Cream Stout it can carry without bottoming out, etc. When the decision was made to rebuild the
entire car and replace the engine with the Duratec, I decided to get the car’s weight down a bit further to really shake things up.
First off, the Duratec with aluminum bell housing and Direct-to-Head Throttle Bodies would cut about 20-30lbs from
the front end. Second, going with CAT Motorsport’s alloy front hubs, and 4-pot calipers, would shave off another 15lbs. and third there were the ultra light MOG carbon fiber seats… Okay, so now you see where this is going.
In the interest of research, I bought an accurate scale that records up to 30lbs. and began the process of weighing
old parts as I remove them and new parts as they arrive from vendors. Unfortunately in the chaos that accompanies
moving into a new house I misplaced a piece of paper where I had logged many of the weights, so the list in the attached spreadsheet is not complete, but it does give a sense of where weight was saved. How much weight? Well when the car was in Road & Track, they listed the weight as 1405lb. I am not sure how much fuel was on board (and they never returned any of my e-mails on this subject, despite many years as a subscriber - the bastards!) but suffice it to say, the car is now much lighter.
After the rebuild I had the car corner balanced with ~4 gallons of fuel and it tipped the scales at 1239 lb. I later made some additional changes that increased the weight by 6 lb. (rear wheel spacers at 2 lb/ea and a heavier duty fan that was 2 lb heavier), and others that shaved over 22 lb (3-1/4 lb savings from the plastic valve cover, 5lb. savings from the Protech alloy shocks, 11 lb moving from a PC680 battery to an EVO2 LiFePO4 battery, and 3-1/4 lb from the
removal of the upper shock mount truss). So the weight should be down to about 1223 lb.
Carving weight out of a car improves everything about it: acceleration, braking, handling, fuel consumption, total load of Murphy’s Irish Cream Stout it can carry without bottoming out, etc. When the decision was made to rebuild the
entire car and replace the engine with the Duratec, I decided to get the car’s weight down a bit further to really shake things up.
First off, the Duratec with aluminum bell housing and Direct-to-Head Throttle Bodies would cut about 20-30lbs from
the front end. Second, going with CAT Motorsport’s alloy front hubs, and 4-pot calipers, would shave off another 15lbs. and third there were the ultra light MOG carbon fiber seats… Okay, so now you see where this is going.
In the interest of research, I bought an accurate scale that records up to 30lbs. and began the process of weighing
old parts as I remove them and new parts as they arrive from vendors. Unfortunately in the chaos that accompanies
moving into a new house I misplaced a piece of paper where I had logged many of the weights, so the list in the attached spreadsheet is not complete, but it does give a sense of where weight was saved. How much weight? Well when the car was in Road & Track, they listed the weight as 1405lb. I am not sure how much fuel was on board (and they never returned any of my e-mails on this subject, despite many years as a subscriber - the bastards!) but suffice it to say, the car is now much lighter.
After the rebuild I had the car corner balanced with ~4 gallons of fuel and it tipped the scales at 1239 lb. I later made some additional changes that increased the weight by 6 lb. (rear wheel spacers at 2 lb/ea and a heavier duty fan that was 2 lb heavier), and others that shaved over 22 lb (3-1/4 lb savings from the plastic valve cover, 5lb. savings from the Protech alloy shocks, 11 lb moving from a PC680 battery to an EVO2 LiFePO4 battery, and 3-1/4 lb from the
removal of the upper shock mount truss). So the weight should be down to about 1223 lb.
| weights.xlsx |
