need help cutting weight
 

hey guys in building a drag car its a 91 rs. ive gutted the inside dash and everything includeing brackets and other brackets. ect. im going to run atleast a 8 point cage and was wondering if anyone has ever cut the extra metal on the inside of the car around where the rear speakers go? ive guted the doors, lexan windows, bumper supports, front of the frame rails, ect. im just looking the cut as much weight as i can cause i might not have the power i need to compete so trying to get light as a can. thanks , Dustyn

Re: need help cutting weight
 

get a fiberglass hood if u dont have one, pin-ons are chaeper and lighter, you could get rid of a little of the meatal behind the b pillar i dunno how much weight you could pull out of it? drop the fuel tank and run a fuel cell

Re: need help cutting weight
 

yea man ive got all that or will in the future.

my main thing left is cutting any extra metal i can. im just not sure what to get rid of. i realy wanna cut out the extra metal for the rear speakers but not sure if its worth it.

thanks for the help

Re: need help cutting weight
 

It's a unibody construction so I'm not sure about cutting into the B pillar like that. However, it gets chopped when they make the convertibles. I am not sure you are going to get too many pounds out of the car that way.

One place people overlook is the battery. A conventional battery weighs 38 - 41 pounds. If it's relocated to the rear, you have to add an additional 11 pounds of battery wire to the car, plus the mass of the cutout switch and battery box.

If you choose to leave the battery in the original position, but instead use a Genesys PC-108 gell cell battery, you get 800 cold cranking amps in a 14 pound package. This eliminates the mass of the battery box, extra cabling, the complexity of a cutout switch, and the weight of the 40 pound battery. The weight savings is therefore close to 40 pounds, more than offsetting what you'll get from gutting the B-pillar.

I've been using a 14 pound PC-108 Genesys battery in one form or another on my street/strip Trans Am since 2004. The only trick is to keep it on a trickle charger when you leave the car parked, because the gel cell, though having incredibly low series resistance and high current delivery, has a lower number of amp-hours worth of capacity, meaning you can't crank & crank & crank on the starter without replenishing the charge. However the weight savings is worth it.

You can also replace the front K-member with an aftermarket tubular structure and some coil-over shocks, and a rack & pinion. That will reduce the mass up front where it really matters.

However, remember too, that 100 pounds equals about .05 seconds worth of E/T. You can reduce your E/T by that much by improving your 60-foot time by half that, which is .025 seconds.

Therefore, traction, launch, and your driving skills are much more critical than taking out the last hundred pounds of mass. Make sure you have a really consistent reaction time (through practice), and a really consistent launch, MPH and E/T before hunting down that last pound. It's probably a more constructive use of one's time.

Re: need help cutting weight
 

cut cut cut. inside the door panels you will have all sorts of things to remove. i know on my dodge i pulled the crash brasses out of the doors they were over 5 lbs each window motors can be removed and windows bolted. if your talking about the rear speaker tray then yah cut it out if it looks like it has some girth to it. the trunk and hood should have support braces that can be cut out. (if using stockers.) its all the little things that add up. i 2ed the post about batterys. some of the light wight racing ones are lighter then just the relo kit.