Quote: Originally Posted by nape Sure, but it has nothing to do with this thread. The oil weighing system is based on viscosity, not a measurement of weight No $hit. It was a joke.

Alright, you might want to toss in a smiley or something next time then, because I've read more retarded statementson here then that one and the poster was dead serious.

On a happy note....

I just weighted in at 2930lbs with fuel, no driver.

Gutted pinned hood, full interior minus rear seats, 4th gen fronts, no rear bumper.

Because thats the way a car should be measured. Car + driver. The car doesnt race itself...

I'm putting my car on a diet this summer, I have a manual steering box from an S10, tubular K member, tubular A arms (coilovers are already on), factory glass hood, and a set of race seats (VERY light full seats). I'm also going to pull the back hatch carpet and replace it with some cloth covering, that stock stuff is HEAVY even with the jute pulled off. I may also pull out the factory carpeting and replace it with some form of cloth, or a cut out factory set of carpets. I'm hoping for 2900lbs without me in it which seems like the 3rd gen holy grail. Anyone ever notice that the disc brake 9 bolt rear weighs a TON more than the drum brake 10 bolt rear?

2900 in street trim w/o shouldn't be too hard.

It's amazing how much weight you can take out of these cars when you really analyze them.

tj...i want 2900 pounds then...with cage and subframes. hook it up

Why do you care how much your show car weighs? It's not like you race it or anything.

you leave the trailer queen out of this. I would like to remove more weight to help with gas mileage while towing it. heh...yea that's the reason.

On trailer queens, I wouldn't even own a trailer if I had a track within 100 miles. I dont want to destroy my rear end or tranny or anything like that and have to get my car home from the next state.

i trailer mine to the track since i break it a lot. But the only other place it gets towed is to this thirdgenfest every year since big stall and big gears on the highway is no fun. Around town I don't have a problem driving it though it doesn't get out much due to work.

Comparatively this rational doesn't work in anybody's favor.
2 guys with identical cars remove the same amount of weight but one reports the weight as 2900lbs and the other reports 3100lbs... one guys is 200lbs heavier than the other. It's annoying to have to do the math. All cars should be weighed without driver when posting in a forum like this or at the very least, drivers should tell us their weight.

It's a way to measure cars for racing's sake. If you truly want to compare you should ask or it should be noted.

IRL (or is it CART?) is the only series out there, to my knowledge, that weighs the cars without drivers.

For comparison sake, my car weighed 2725 without me last year

I have a great way to lose a bit of weight...

Just go to the gym every day for the next 2 months!
Depending on your weight, savings could be anywhere from 5-40 pounds

Put the battery in the back. I read somewhere that moving the battery from the extreme front of the car to the extreme rear is equivillent to moving your engine back six inches!

I read somewhere that if I take some pills my **** will grow 12 inches in two weeks!... reading is dangerous if you don't take time to sort the bullsh!t from the truth.

Difference between your smart-assed comment and mine though are that mine can be backed up with mathematics.

take the rest of the interior out, that should get you to at least 2850

Show me the mathematics then, smart guy.

HotRodLarry: It's actually a bit better weight loss then that. The carpet is almost 50lbs and a 4th gen pass. seat is ~25lbs, IIRC. Removing what's left should be almost a 100lb reduction (plastics, speakers, under dash junk, etc).

The carpet is gutted, but the insulation stuff didn't weight that much. I may remove the carpet anyway, my LT1 car needs new carpet. Plus I'll pull the door panels.

What under-dash stuff can be removed for more reduction? Seems like everything under there is used to hold the dash up!

I'm preparing to make the car TBI instead of TPI, so that should reduce some engine weight. Plus I still need to remove all the unnecessary brackets and such.

It works two ways. First, you move the weight. Second, if you put the battery BEHIND the rear wheels, you use the rear wheels as a lever and lift the front up (just a little). Since it weights 40lbs, this could make a big difference as a whole.

TBI instead of TPI???

tubular suspension
coilovers
aluminum block
aluminum heads
aluminum intake manifold
painless wiring harness (removes all unwanted wiring)
convert to MSD ignition
convert to autometer sending units
manual brakes
move battery to rear
fiberglass hood
fiberglass fenders
th350
carbon fiber driveshaft
aluminum bumper brace
headers w/ turndowns
strip undercoating off car and primer


REMOVE:
spare tire and jack
AC
smog
ground effects(if any)
all stereo stuff
carpet
backseats and belts
passenger seat and belt
headliner
dash(replace with aftermarket guages on custom panel)
power steering pump
convert to manual steering
lexan windows/windshield/hatch glass
drag wheels(prostars perhaps) 15x3.5" front and 15x10" rear
remove front swaybar
windshield wipers/motor
passenger side mirror
rearview mirror
door panels
inner fender plastic
console


and there you have it.. 2800lbs haha

TPI, yes. Tired of MPFI. Sucks.

I like your list 5678TA. I'm going to have to save that.

5678TA: The list isn't bad but there are certain things on the list which are just money spent and not weight reduction, like fiberglass fenders and tubular suspension (some parts).

The stock fenders are so light, that many times fiberglass fenders are heavier by the time they increase the thickness so they don't just flap in the wind.

If low weight is your goal, make sure you look at the weight of the fabricated parts. Many aftermarket LCAs and PHBs are actually twice as heavy (or more!) as the stock pieces.

Just as a data point, I finally got around to removing my stock steel front bumper support, & weighing both it & the aluminum one I found late last year. As near as I could tell, the aluminum one saves roughly 8.5 or 9 lbs over the steel version. Because it came from an '82-'84 Camaro, I had to trim the ends a bit before it all fit inside the sheetmetal, so between that & removing the plastic "honeycomb" structure, I figure it saved me about 10 lbs.

I was bummed because I was hoping for somewhere in the range of 12-15 lbs, but at least it's weight removed from the best possible spot on the car...

nape: i added fiberglass fenders just because.. and yes, the stock fenders are pretty light.. and for the suspension parts, i figured that if you're gonna shave the weight, you might as well beef everything up in the process so you dont have to later on.. and if you factor in those parts to your initial 2800lbs goal, you wont be disappointed when you have to "upgrade", because they will already be there..

Gotcha, just giving you a heads up because most of the F-body aftermarket overbuilds LCAs and PHBs. You can go aluminum and be under the stock weights instead of a 10lb PHB like some vendors.

The reason that most post with the driver weights is that usually weight is discussed in the context of racing, where the only thing that really matters is how much weight you’re pushing around the track.

Much like bhp (crank) vs hp (wheel)… it’s easier if people just specify what they’re reporting, like I usually point out that I’m a heavyweight (~300#) in these discussions, which sometimes is relivant in other contexts besides just how fast the car runs, like why I might have modified something the way I did.

1- Overtraining will hurt more than doing it right, letting your body recover enough…
2- Won’t work for everyone… I’ve worked out for years and years but haven’t been in the gym much this year for assorted reasons. If I hit the gym regularly right now I’d gain weight from an initial bulking up from my muscle cells storing additional glycogen and other effects of basically having muscle tissue sitting around not being used suddenly being put back in action…

I’ve always wondered about those “grow a foot using our product on your tool for a month….” Who would want to grow another foot? If nothing else it would make buying socks harder since they usually don’t come in 3 packs…

sorry to stray off the topic but i know first hand about overtraining.. used to be a swimmer for 12 years.. my last year i was overtraining and i would just sleep if i had free time.. energy went down, recovery was slower than ever.. and i could not better my times from the previous year.. but i still took 2 state titles.. haha

I haven't read this entire thread, but I will(as it is an important to me also)when time allows. Anyone replace their starter with the lightwieght alum. mini starter by Hitachi? I think mine is 7.5 lbs. I bought one, but haven't put it in as I don't want to crawl under it and don't have access to a lift yet. When I do, I'll wiegh them both and post it up. I only want to achieve 3000 lbs. I like some tunes, my PW,PL,PS,etc. I too would like to go all alum. as well as tubular front. I will be rerouting my battery to the rear as well. Carbon fiber drive shaft sounds good too. Can you buy the alum front bumpers, or do I have to find one at a pick and pull? What cars came with the alum. ones? Thanks, Daniel U

Remove all valves in the heads and have the cylinders being pumped with gas all the time

When I did my TPI 350 swap I bought a Walbro 255lph pump, and a 3hp mini starter that weighs around 8 pounds. These 2 things I didn't skimp on and I've never had to replace. I bought cheap headers, they're gone now, cheap air filters, gone now, tried to reuse my stock gauges, gone now. Basically I should've done the stuff full out the first time and stuck with it. That's why I haven't installed my tubular front end equipment, because I was holding out for a pinto rack and steering knuckle.

I saved the aluminum one from my ’83 TA to use in my ’87 TA… the aluminum ones are made of heavier gauge stuff then the steel ones so the weight drop won’t be as big as you’d expect but I’m going to try swiss cheesing every bit that isn’t being used to either hold it to the brackets or to the egg crate bumper support and see if I can get it lighter then what I think I could do with some thin wall tubing formed to support the bumper cover.

You can probably accomplish that quite effectively with a big enough shot of N2O

Let's see....I hafta shave about 1700lbs off my GTA, just to get close!

I don't know if that would really be possible, and keep it a street car. Even for track only, I'm betting that would be hard.

That would be great if this thread was entitled "Lets calculate your HP using your trap speed and vehicle weight!" or, "Are you weight legal for xxxxxx race class??"

But since this thread (and most of the vehicle weight threads) exist soley for the technical specifics of getting a thirdgen to x amount of weight, it doesnt make sense to throw in how much your body weighs. No one cares how much you (not as in you specifically) and your car cumulatively weigh here, as far as I know there is no race series officials checking up on this thread to see who is in violation of the race weight, and no one doing ballpark calcs as to how much horsepower you are putting down.

I'm convinced that the main reason people post their "race weight" in threads like this is to sound elitist, as though they are the only people "smart enough" to know that "real racers" only care about race weight.

and I just noticed the posts about this are a couple weeks old but im going to beat a dead horse anyway because this is one of those things that keeps me up at night
Well, that, and the voices in my head

Pinto rack is had, as are the A arms, K member isn't here so I can't take a picture of it but it's pretty standard coilover type setup. I also have an SMC hood now that I may stick with, may sell and go with a pin on fiberglass. I'll get some weights once all this goes on. *picture quality sucks but you can get the point*

i got you with this one. according to your pic you still have the solvent cans. there is like 5-7 lbs. if your racing this. get hood pins. 4-6 of them, depending on your hood and speed. if you loose the latch, hinges, struts, and latch bracket (in the core support area by radiator) that will be at least 50-70 lbs. i did it on my car. i saw one guy says glass fenders... no. stockers are light as it is, if you replace them, you got paint issues then, plus they may weigh more in the end. if you want a real project for a good 20 + lbs., gm origionally put a foam type of stuff in the rear 1/4 panels, i found out the hard way when doing some body work, remove it, they put it there to prevent rust, it obsorbs water, and stays in it, and rots you car from the inside out. there has to be a way to remove it without tearing into the body from the outside. hope i helped.

No, it's not to sound elitist, it's because race weight is the only weight that matters. The friggen car doesn't drive itself...

So, if you don't want to list the weight with driver, do you want us to start listing the dry weight instead of the wet weight? I'll bet I could get my car down to 2600 tomorrow if we're talking dry weight, but it doesn't matter because you can't use the car without fluids. Just like you can't use it without driver.

What about weight without suspension? Or weight of the car without wheels and tires? Maybe the weight without motor and trans?

Are you talking about seam filler? I took my car down to the tub and I never found piles of foam, just the junk the factory globs on the seams. I had good luck with a knotted wire wheel on a 4 1/2" angle grinder on the fluffier stuff and I used a gasket scrapper to get the majority of the gooey seam filler off. The gooey stuff will come off in chunks and you'll have to use solvent (or gas works too) to wipe the residue away. Don't do the fluffy stuff if you have the interior in or you don't want to get the garage dirty, because it gets everywhere when you start grinding it.

You're right about the weight though, all together it's probably good for almost 20 lbs.

I vote for this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_a...t_empty_weight

Aeronautical engineers would be out of a job if they compared airframe weight modifications with randomly variable payloads in the equation.

If basic aircraft empty weight (weight without the constantly variable level of fuel during flight, and payload) is good enough for the aviation industry, I think the same principal is good enough for comparing cars.

Like a loadmaster/crew chief, everyone will need to calculate their "race weight" every time they race since fuel level is always changing, and humans never weigh exactly the same day to day. Fuel even gets lighter and heavier depending on temperature.

But most importantly, we are discussing the engineering aspects of weight reduction with respect to thirdgens which requires that we eliminate variables like people and fuel which will always vary.

Easy solution, give the weight of the car then your weight, problem solved. Or better yet give the weight with you in it then tell us your weight, we'll work it out from there. Either way works, just give us a formula to go by. BTW it really doesn't matter what the car weighs with you in it for the purposes of this thread, but it's nice to know what it weighed with you in it when you ran X time's. No need to bicker over this considering both sides have valid points.

Just found out that GM has discontinued the alum front bumpers. If you want one, the only way to find one is at a pick-n-pull.

Will the aluminum front bumper support fit my 87 GTA? At well over 4000lbs, my car needs a diet!

I'm not sure on a Pontiac, but if you have the time, pull off the front bumper cover and look. Post some pics please!

Time I have more than enough but...

Ability to pull it apart to look (besides living in an apartment, with no garage) is another!

Even if I had a garage apartment (I'm first in the waiting list here), I couldn't do it.

When you guys say "4th gen seats" do you mean 4th gen camaro or firebird seats?

Yes they do.

what year did these come on? thanks

82-85. I suspect your 82 has one already. Check it out with a magnet.