You can remove nine pounds by replacing your steel front bumper insert with one from a 1982 Firebird, which is made of aluminum.

You can save 29 pounds by replacing your battery with a Genesis racing battery, which weighs only 13 pounds. It'll run your car just fine, but doesnt have much reserve capacity for cold weather. Keep a trickle charger on it when parking your car for more than a few days.

You can also save weight by putting on a set of GTA crosslace aluminum wheels, probably five to six pounds per corner. This reciprocating weight is a big deal, actually. You get a ten-fold payoff in performance by concentrating on reciprocating weight than on static weight. If you are just going straight line, go even farther by converting to 15-inch wheels and outfitting them with drag radials for the back, and narrow tires for the front.

Remove your swaybar for the weekend, and remove your strut tower brace & wonderbar, if drag racing. If road racing or autocrossing, of course, leave them be.

Another item to consider is the mass of the torque converter. Convert to a ten-inch performance converter from TCI, Yank, Neal, SLP, or Vigilante. Not only will you lose reciprocating mass, but it'll be stronger, have a higher torque multiplication ratio, and enable you to have a bit higher stall speed for the launch.

--Dan

 

gut away hoss,theres tons of little stuff that adds up,think twice about keeping the ac.theres a ton of weight there to be had.but keep in mind if you only want a 14.9,isnt there an easier and better way to achieve that through say a hp increase????i me4an a rule of thumb is every 100 pounds =one tenth of a second et.,so depending on how far you are from you 14.9,you may not reach it by gutting the car..what do you want all out speed or a little extra?i mean yiou can yank the matting under the carpet,pull seats,remove hood insulations,washer reserve,even if you have old bumpers drill the **** out of them to lighten them,you wont need them in a wreck anyways,theyre going to be ruined in any crash,swap cast iron parts to aluminum if possible,heck run your pass w/o your hood,go on a diet if you can,heck i know i can stand to loose 20 pounds.drivers weight effects car also.junk that kicker box and amp..you dont need tunes thumping away when you got it to the floor,regular old am/fm works fine with 1 speaker....

 

Im not trying to spend any money before this sunday, thats why im not trying to add hp. I just want to squeeze everything i can out of it as it is right now. Theres a reason the AC is staying, its called summer, it gets pretty hot here in Texas. The AC stays.

 

If you've only got three days, and you want to reduce weight CHEAP, I guess it really limits you to stuff like:

Passenger seat, rear seats
Spare tire & jack
Stereo system subwoofer
Windshield washer fluid
Front swaybar
Wonderbar
All of the Tootie Roll Lollipop wrappers that are stuffed into the ashtray
After that, I wouldnt lighten it until you are serious about turning it into more of a race car, and have committed to jumping up the horsepower. In fact, dont go nutso on weight reduction unless:
1) You are trying to bracket race it regularly
2) You have developed the TPI engine with speed parts as far as you can take it.

 

One of the most overlooked thing about weight reduction is the little things (too many to list) that only weigh .5 lb or so. Many people won't go through the effort to remove lots of little things, even though they all add up in the end.

My buddy was taking crap earlier this week because he spent 6 hours installing hood pins and swissing the underhood bracing of his 2002 v6/5spd camaro. Lots of people couldn't fathom why he would spend that much time to lose 10 lbs. He has done lots of work like that, enabling him to take his car to a 14.04 @ 97 without any internal engine work, and with stock exhaust (!cat). Just bolt-ons, suspension, gear, and lots of weight reduction.

- Justin

 

to lose some pounds you can get a manual steering box from an 80's S-10. you can toss the power steering pump and all the hoses and stuff and thatll cut a few pounds..

another thing you could do is get some racing seats. the cheapest ones from jegs are only 36.99 each, but thats just the bare seat, if you want some padding they sell the padded seat covers for another 33.99 each in whatever color you want. on race day just take off the seat covers and you could probably install the passenger seat so it only take a couple minutes to take out itself and save weight that way

another way to save weight, get a exhaust that exits in front of the rear axle or side pipes

take off the fire blanket from the underside of the hood

take a whiz before you get on the track

 

Heck that formula should run better than a 14.99 without any weight reduction. My Z ran a 9.0 in the eighth before any mods and no weight reduction. That converts to about low 14's.

 

Not on our track DA was 5500ft today and my best slip looked like this

reaction .6111
60 ft 2.0799
ET @ 594 8.9780
1/8 ET 9.6110
1/8 MPH 71.08
1/4 ET 15.0698 (so close to the 14 i could taste it!)
1/4 MPH 91.09

That was the only time I had any kind of traction. I made one run that I went 17.02 @ 85.52 MPH with my nose pointed at the stands until 3rd gear. That was pretty scary.

Anyone else running a pretty much stock TPI notice it just falls on its face about the last 200ft? Wednesday I'm taking all the EGR off and Saturday I'm putting on the headers and y-pipe. So I think I've got my 14 in the bag.

 

Your Formula 350 *should* be a 14 second car, bone-stock, I think. You can probably get it into the 14's by hooking up a laptop, and logging the ALDL data, then re-burning a PROM with an updated tune. Surely someone there in Texas has TunerCat, or software from Craig Moates?

 

Ditch your exhaust system from the cutout back. Maybe make it removeable and that's a ton of weight gone.

I run a shorty system that has no cats and ends before the axle. These over the axle kits with a big crossflow muffler are heavy. Track use will have me swapping out my 4" flowmaster for a 4" Race Magnum which is lighter. Hopefully it results in more power also.

Passenger seat is dead weight and the front swaybar being gone helps a ton like said above.

 

Thing is my car has 199,4XX miles on the original motor, never rebuilt. Plus again, our track conditions are terrible. Amarillo use to be a stop on the pro circuit, but the owners let it go down the craphole. BUT we have new owners now and theyre doin it right. I really dont know anything about using the laptop to tune and PROM burning, Id be better off chucking the computer and going carb. Im making a trip to Ennis Texas this summer, Texas Motor Speedway, down there im looking to run a 14.3 or so. Anyway, I was pretty happy with a 15.0, there was an LS1 camaro that only pulled a 14.7, that gives you a better idea of how bad our track is.

 

they make plexi-glass for the windows and that saves something around 300LBS!! i think they have it in summit if not look it up on google

 

plexi glass on a street car would be bad...you ever work with plexi glass? You know how easy it is to scratch? If you had dirt on it somone simply brushing up against your window could scratch it.

 

Not to mention that plexi-glass, lexan, etc are illegal in many states for street cars.

- Justin

 

If all you want to do is get 14.99 at the strip, removing your front swaybar will proably do it alone. The better weight transfer on the launch will make a big difference, not to mention the weight savings. Another trick that worked well for me was to remove the 2 airfilters from the airbox. If I remember right, I picked up 2 mph at the traps. Just dont go offroading and you'll be fine. Hope that helps.