Does anyone know what kind of unsprung weight there is on the mkIII's that can be removed without effecting the chassis durability? I'm planning on putting my future supra on a diet.

Sprung weight is also fine, but I'm mostly looking to improve the handling/acceleration a little with the weight reduction.

Taking out the air conditioning and all of its components would definately help your chubby girl lose some weight.

I think there's a way of replacing the doors with some light weight material like carbon fiber or something. also the back window can be replaced with some light weight plastic. I read this in some magazine about drifting some time ago at meineke while I was getting my new brakes. All this was done to a sc300 to help it light-en up..... hehe.... anyways, this is some serious weight loss which will also cost a lot of dinero if you know what I mean.

there is a replacement drive shaft available
removing the a/c
use a mazda rx 7 donut instead of the full sized supra spare tire

Replacing parts seems like the easiest way to lose the weight so far. Dropping the a/c seems like a good idea since it doesn't get that hot in NJ. I was hoping to see something other than replacing parts (as it's beeen mentioned it costs a lot) and more of removing unwanted parts. What the heck made the supra so damn heavy?

frame and glass. you can get lexan at local hardware store, but i suggest only doing the door and side windows. the rear would take weight off where you need it.

you could after replacing the back window with some light weight material move the battery to the back to compensate.
(you can also replace the seats with light weight high performance seats. Again, weight reduction = $$$$$$

you could after replacing the back window with some light weight material move the battery to the back to compensate.
(you can also replace the seats with light weight high performance seats. Again, weight reduction = $$$$$$ [/b][/quote]
you could, but it wouldnt be street legal and its a biatch to clean. when you get scratches, you'll need a blow dryer or heat gun to take em out. eh, while your there take out the take and get a fuel cell. i wouldnt waste time or money on seats, you'll only lose 40lbs, if that. for every 100 is a tenth of a second.

rip out your back seats and rear interior and make with panla board and some carpet so it doesnt look gettho, i would look into some racing seat from summit racing get those big mofo seats outta there, i would do the lexan side windows only, loose the spare tire completly, have fun

yea i don't believe lexun would be legal on the streets

but you would be surprised what the seats weigh..... so i've heard.. don't quote me on this.. drivers seat = 30lbs and passengers seat weighs in at 20lbs or similar
under the carpets there is alot of sound deadening
also under back seats
there's stuff thats glued to the chassis in the trunk.. you need to chisel it off if you want to remove it

air con
seats
sound deadening

that's all i can think of right now

you could, but it wouldnt be street legal and its a biatch to clean. when you get scratches, you'll need a blow dryer or heat gun to take em out. eh, while your there take out the take and get a fuel cell. i wouldnt waste time or money on seats, you'll only lose 40lbs, if that. for every 100 is a tenth of a second. [/b][/quote]
is it me or did I get burned?

is it me or did I get burned? [/b][/quote]
how much did you pay for your seats? if you buy the name brands that are actually worth it that are decent on the street, no. the lightest seats i've seen to date, weight in roughly 5-10lbs. the downfall is that they are very uncomfortable and designed for short distances(drag racing). they run anywhere from 100-150$.

I haven't done any mods to my cars as of yet (I got two) a red 88 manual and a white 91 automatic
the white one doesn't run yet, so first things first I got to make them run. then I'll worry about lightweight mods.
About the plastic windows, I know a couple of people in the street racing scene that have replaced some windows on their Hondas. now, as long as the cops don't know you have replaced the windows it's not street illegal is it?

My yellow monster got the following mods to lighten up ...
Striped out Rear - no back seats carpet or side paneling.
and it gets really noisy back ther..
A/C done away with ...
No spare wheels.
Relocating the battery to the boot.

Thinking of ditching that big skid pan underneath the engine as well.
Also loosing some weight on those heavy doors !

Remember less weight better accleration less braking and less weight round the corners.

http://www.icon.co.za/~electrad/Misc/myellow.JPG

My Car at an Auto Cross Meeting

Yes, I stipped my monte carlo and just the sound material and floor carpet was a tremendous ammount of weight. It had to be like 200 lbs. Also, Replace the front and rear bumpers if you dont drive in traffic too much, or just dont crash. I made some of styrofoam and plywood. Get lighter wheels/tires/driveline parts too. Thats always what i look at first.

DC motors are heavy too. I havn't heard of anyone that got rid of their window motors and replaced them with some sort of manual crank ones but the motor for the hatchback wiper should shed 10-15 pounds

I took my whole rear wiper assm. and wiper arm off, and it probably does weigh about 15 total. The power antenna is another 8 or 9 pounds too.

you're dreaming! I happen to have a wiper motor/arm assembly right here in my hand. Using a postal scale it weighs in at a WHOPPING.... 2pounds15ounces

...and to the person that said take out your rear interior and replace with board covered with carpet...have you ever weighed the plastic rear panels? I have cause I have em up on ebay right now. All combined, if you took out the 7 panels (and not including the seats) you would have taken out right around 22 pounds (the quarter window trim being the heaviest at 2.5lbs). I wish I had a 4x8 sheet of, lets say you used wallboard (gonna be lighter than masonite by about half). I would bet your net weight reduction would be about....+20lbs. Adding weight is not what were looking for here. That stuff is far heavier than plastic.

Lets say you rip out your seats (leaving only one fiberglass racing bucket in the drivers side), A/C unit, run no spare, replace the hatch with lexan, pull your window regulators, weld in a shorty exhaust (side exit), go to an aluminum radiator, and strip out all the sound deadening. Now lets add a set of super lightweight rims, but forget about safety and forego the roll cage, racing harness, fire extinguisher, battery box, driveshaft loop, bellhousing blanket, or any of that other useless stuff.
My best estimate and being quite generous I would say you dropped 500lbs? While that may translate to a full half second at the strip, you now have a non-street legal race car, that will be loud enough to wake the dead, rattle like Cessna in a hurricane, and cook you like a Christmas goose in summer. Not that you'll ever get to sit in it much 'cause sitting in a racing bucket is about as much fun as pounding your balls flat with a wooden mallet!

Yeah sign me up for that!

All Im trying to say is be reasonable. If you want a full blown race car with Zero amenities, great! but if you think you're gonna shave enough wieght out of a daily driver to gain a whole half second at the track you're gonna be dissappointed, and in the end your gonna have a car that no fun to drive to the store and back, much less take a trip to the mountains or coast or wherever you like to go to get away. The Supra is a pig, face it! you're FAR better off spending your time and money on HP upgrades.

actually yah i picked up the wrong electric motor. The supra wiper motor is tiny. I just saw that today. I was about to go weigh mine and take a picture of it to prove it but then i was like ahh crap wrong motor. oops lol.

well all i did with mine is take the spare tire out, the thing had water in there and it was rusting badly, so took that shit out , and i took my backseat out too.

1) it loosend sum weight
2) im a selfish bastard that dont like when pple ask me for rides

I removed the backseat from my 73Celica an put in a carpeted and padded platform for my dog to ride. Thats the only passenger I ever wanted riding in the back with me.

i should do that do , since everytime i got my chow with, the damn dog wants to shift the car for , either that , or the little son of a gun, wants to go down where the gas pedal is, its only a matter of time b4 i get into an accidnt, if i keep doing this, i already know this

(maybe then you guys can see that part-out thread you predicted for me)lol:)

Im going to take my whole interior apart on my turbo, because its getting a cow/black treatment (below for those who care). Im gona see how much it all weighs and do a nice write up of it. Although it may take a few weeks, so dont expect it soon. And i dont mean the plastic, The carpet and padding and seats/brackets and things like that, of substantial weight. Im also going to weld up all the little seams that are spot welded. Around the windshield, along the floor, around the hatch mounts, all that. And im going to replace the carpet padding and sound deadening with dense sheet foam(light) and spray foam in the hollow spaces.

http://www.supraforums.com/forum/sho...89#post4299789 f

hahah I just had to add to this. I personaly have aftermarket bucket racing seats( AAA racing, 7 lb's max) and not much more as far as weight reduction. When I go to the track, this is before I started installing a jdm, I would take the spare out and all the bs in the car and at 11 lb's of boost I could hardly break 14.7 sec. They say with up to $75,000 invested your only looking at a 30% weight reduction. So good luck.

Im not leaving the interior out, Im painting it and putting it back in. Im weighing it all for other people. lol. I just plan to offset the weight with boost. I like all my comfy supra stuff. :). And that sucks...I know a guy with a grand national that runs 12 lbs of boost and he ran a 12.9. Yours should be a little faster than 14.7. And i dont see where that 75k is going, Remaking all the body panels from CF? Thats a lot of money. That is like...23-2500 lbs tho. Thats pretty light.

hehe..
Have you raced your supra? They are heavy and the clutch sucks. The turbo dosen't spool up very fast...shure you may hit 8 psi quickly and and then it will climb to 11 but that shure as hell dose not help your 0 to 60 ft time. All I have to say about you buddy running 12 sec's, Is dont believe it tell you see it. will he show you a actual track time slip. track time storys are as bad as big fish stories, and for some reason every one tells me they are in the 12's. BTW. I didn't say that's what it takes to loose 30% total car weight. I have read figures like that. Rip out over a thousand pounds from your car then tell me how much it cost. Nothing is absolute.

I dont need to see the timeslip, I was there in person. He ran a 13.1 and not sure of speed, and a 12.9 @ 101. And yes, I race a lot with my supra. Im going to english town next week to get an actual time tho. Everyone says that supras suck off the line...But that is where i kill everyone (this is my 86.5 NA 5sp). I also have an 88 turbo that im doing some work too but i havent got to drive yet. Its an auto. And i wasnt contesting the weight thing, just saying i could do a lot of work to the car for 75k... lol. Im sure it would be a lot to get rid of 1000 lbs and still keep the car rigid. But persoanlly, I love how planted feeling the car is. Its awesome. Way better than most cars on the highway. I just want to get rid of weight that doesnt do anything, Because it will bug me to know its there. Oh yah, do you have any experience with the supra chassis? ive never really looked at it but i would guess its just a subframe type like the camaro and mustang, And that it would benfit greatly from subframe ties. Im gona try to make some, If it needs them.

ya your right. 14.7 does suck.:( you should see what my stock clutch looked like....fried. I had many probs that night, but I still roasted a few hondas and that felt good. I almost got beat by a tweaker in a turbo mini van? That scared the shit out of me. I think if he beat me I would have just drove home and cryed I hope with the new motor and the clutch up grade im installing, I will drop into the 13's.
and no i dont have any experence with the subframe sorry.

Yah, those turbo dodge minivans are fast as hell. And they only weigh like 2900-3000 lbs. Why is a van lighter than my car?? My turbo supra is an automatic, So i dont have to worry about fried clutches. Im sure the one in my na looks pretty bad, From all the 3k rpm slipping clutch take offs lol. It still holds and hooks up fine. Thats cause it only has about 2k miles on it haha.

transfer the weight
 

I have a 91 turbo I use for drag racing. At first I went in and gutted the whole interior and put in one aluminum racing seat. Talk about light weight, but all in the wrong places. The front is heavy so any weight you can loose from there is a plus. Also, removing the a/c compressor will give you a few extra horses as well as the weight loss. The seats weigh a ton more than 20 and 30 lbs. Especially the drivers seat if you have power seat.

southernsupra

Your not getting rid of much under the hood, as most is neccesray. Move the batter to the back passenger side, thats about the heaveiest thing youll get out. Your not getting the front very light due to the 600lb motor thats sitting in there.

I heard the new Corvette is using some special aluminum alloy. I was thinking about replacing some stuff into this alloy. Does anyone know about it?

Theres not really anyway to bond the aluminum to the steel. Unless you glue and bolt it, but that might end up weighing more lol.

have what happens to a vette when it gets into an accident?
why would you wanna put that material in your car

this is why i like older cars with steel
i feel a whole sH1t load safer
and i know i got a lesser chance of dying
with a steel car

True a 100%. But I've been told that the supra MKIII is even heavier than a MKII by someone who owned both. I'm not into MKII myself. But it's a pitty in that case. So I was thinking of all kinds of alternate ways. The Corvette, well, aluminum doesn't seem strong... but appearantly it's a new technology or something using a special allow made out of aluminum mostly.

BULL!

no offense to you
but car companies will say anything to sell thier cars
lets face it the vette is a strugling car in the world market
its getting left behind by the cars in its class
they are doing everything they can for it to keep up
speedwise at least
they are cutting as much weigh as they can

if it was completely alloy that would be a diffrent story
its one of the strongest metal around but it not flexible
and idk what are the other downsides

but you know
ill rather have a heavy car and be alive
than have a feather then be killed by a touch

and yes the mk3's are heavier than mk2's
maybe bcuz i think mk3's were designd as a touring car
thats why it has all those deadning material inside
it offered a little bit of comfort, and somewhat sum luxury (for the the time it was made at least)

but im working on how else i can make my car lighter
the problem is, most of the weigh being taken out
is from the back of the car
and you cant take that much from the front
wont this make the car unbalanced,
will i have any problems jumping off the line
cuz there no more weigh pushing the wheels to the ground?

c4, c5, and c6 corvettes are actually made from hydroformed steel space frames with fiberglass embedded plastic (called frp) body panels. They are actually very safe cars in crash tests. The only aluminum body part in them is the floor pans...which are aluminum and balsa wood lol. Before that they were just full steel frames with totally fiberglass panels, and they were still tough cars

i am sure the corvette would not be on the street if it wasnt safe

lol is tha tguy serious? "the vette cant keep up with cars in its class? R U NUTS? the corvette beats out cars above its class. just as fats and nice as cars triple its price. lol the corvetter costs wat 80k maybe? and a viper more than that. but a 06 vette has OVER 500 hp and 500ft/lb. a viper cant touch that. and if u want to spend over 200k for a ferrari or a lambo and get slightly faster. and i mean slighty. and that wuld be the only upside. if u look at it, a corevette is a consumer buy. fast, cheap, handles and drives just as good as a car duble its price would. kthnx


marc