Ok the season is over and we did alot of good with our brand new 3rd gen. my fiance got 4th in points in her fist yr and i also drove in other classes and got alot of win lights.its a street legal car that alot of people here said wouldnt hold together. we only broke one thing on the last race which was the gears think it knocked off two teeth. anyway were lookin to upgrade this winter and im searching for some ideas. forgot to mention was a factory v6 car and has all factory v6 suspension still. looks great with the rake in it. i can send pics in anyone is interested.

Current:motor-388 stroker on 93 pump gas. made 416hp and 468 ft lbs tq
trans-built 350 turbo with 3500 stall tci converter B&M zgate shifter in factory location which looks great!
driveline- factory drive shaft factory rear end housing with 4.10 gears and mini spool. 10.5x29 slicks
chassis- STOCK! no joke all original. swap trans crossmember and drive shaft loop thats it.

ok for upgrades i already have factory alum driveshaft to lighten rotatin wieght. removin factory gas tank goin to fuel cell and electric pump. we are cagin the car and cuttin out some wieght as well. all we took out was back seat spare and jack. im open to all ideas but this is a budget car kinda so if somethin could be made please i would love to know. i am open to some machines to fab material up. also i heard these cars came out factory disc rear brake how hard would it be to swap? thanks i know its a long post but all help is appreciated.

 

I have all spohn in the back with strange sa shocks with a S60 and lakewood 90/10 up front.

 

If it's a strip only car, remove everything not required for speed or safety. You can search through the forum on weight reduction ideas.

You don't need an "aluminum" driveshaft especially for drag racing. The factory version will easily survive your power levels. If you want to upgrade, buy a 3" x .083" steel driveshaft with 1350 u-joints and replace the yokes on the tranny and diff to 1350 also.

The factory fuel tank is 25 pounds empty so converting to a fuel cell to only hold as much fuel as you need is a good weight saving. I run a 4 gallon cell mounted up front.

Caging the car as in a full cage or just a typical 6 point roll bar? A 6 point roll bar is good to 10.0 in the 1/4 mile as long as you don't modify the floor or firewall. You don't need a full cage until you get into the 9's. A full cage in a slower car means you can always make the car faster in the future but until then, it's extra weight.

 

I would start with sub-frame connectors , boxing the rear control arms and replacing the rubber bushings with polyurethane or aluminum replacements. Rebuilding the drum brakes would be a lot cheaper and work just as good as the factory disc brake set up for drag racing. Also rebuilding the front suspension has helped me in the past. Also look in to a drive shaft safety loop. You could make the sub-frame connectors, drive shaft loop and box the control arms yourself if you want. just look at the boards for pic's from others

if you fixed the rearend you could still make the last three days at beech bends trukey race

 

yea i wish we could make the turkey race but with the holidays coming money is funny. the cage will be a 6pt roll bar and proly goin to 5 or 8 gallon cell because sometimes the car is drove in hot lap style with no fuel time. i have looked on some weight reduction but cant find much. alum drive shaft is a thought proly wont be installed. drums were rebuilt last yr thought if i could switch to disc cheap would save rotating weight. in 1/8th mile rotating weight is alot. i have won alot of rounds in this car footbraking. two weekends ago got to ten in pro and broke out by 2 thousandths which was my fault had room. very happy with car just wanting to improve quality.

 

Hard to say how much you can cut off weight without knowing what you've already done. If it's a track only car, street safety stuff can be ditched.

Do you still have the front and rear crash bumpers? Do you still have the crash beam inside the doors? Do you still have a heater assembly sitting on the firewall? I could make page after page of things that can be removed. If you want to keep it looking "stock" then you're going to sacrifice speed for excess weight. If you want to go fast by building a pure race car, then completely gut it. My race weight with a full cage, and a BBC is just under 3100 pounds. I'd like to get that under 3000 pounds but at the stage I'm at, it gets very expensive to reduce more weight. It would be easier to just build a tube chassis car. I always seem to be adding more than I remove.

Reducing weight is the easiest way to go faster but as you've already seen, you don't have to go fast to win in a bracket race.

 

what has been done to remove weight heater box and ac stuff is gone. spare jack and back seat is gone. switched to manual s10 steering box aswell. obvisouly stock exhaust is goen to. doors still have all power windows in them getting gutted this winter. crash bars still in hope to take out as well. like said switchin to fuel cell losin weight there. all interior still in we like the stock look inside. plan to take dash out but keep the top pad in and sheet metal under neath to hold gauages etc. radio still in and everything. plan to shave alot but still keep a good stock look. any advice on other stuff to take out. might buy racing seats and ditch stock ones. heard 4th gen seats on 3rd gen sliders are light is this true? could be cheaper done that way. any other help would be great thanks.

 

Power option doors are heavy. When I pulled mine off, I cut the harness going to the door, unbolted the hinges and put it on a scale. 105 pounds each. I picked up some non power option doors from the junkyard, cut out the crash bar, removed all the inner paneling, cut out most of the inner steel but left just enough to hold the window regulator and door handle. I covered the inner door with some aluminum. That alone brought the weight down to 75 pounds each.

Since then, I've removed the glass and window regulator and installed some Lexan for a window but never took the door off to see how much weight saving that achieved. I'd take a wild guess to say they're now no less than 50 pounds each.

One of my winter projects is to install some fiberglass doors that I've already picked up. I need to fabricate a hinge system and once they're installed, bolt on a Lexan window. Right now the empty fiberglass shell is 15 pounds each so after I'm done, I can't see them being any more than 25 pounds each at the most.

Factory seats are heavy. My power seat got yanked in favor of some other GM seat the second year I was racing. I think I pulled it from some front wheel drive Buick or Olds. It was on good condition and was much lighter than a power seat. You just need to unbolt the seat from the f-body slider track and bolt on some other GM seat. A few years later, I was looking to remove more weight and installed a poly seat but made some custom mount brackets because I have the seat moved back, lowered and tilted backwards so I have more head room around the roll cage. If using a non OEM seat, you need to make a back support to attach the back of the seat to the back brace of the roll bar/cage. The goes for both the poly or aluminum aftermarket seats.

You can keep that "stock" look and still remove a lot of weight. There's a lot of junk under the dash that can be removed now that the heater is gone. As I mentioned above, take out the front and rear crash bumpers. You can't see them behind the plastic covers and don't need them on the dragstrip.

 

we plan to remove the under dash stuff leaving only the top and sheet metal fab a under neath dash panel which will remove some weight. i would love to get lighter seats but these seats arent power so they could be worse. the doors have already been painted new last yr so proly jus gut what we have now and will again lose some weight. crash bumbers will come out to and switchin to fuel cell loses some weight. would love to find some wheels cheap we jus have american racing street wheels now and lighter ones would be nice. but all this trying to stay on budget is hard so cuttin and removin is the easiest.