Lightweight Supra.

hey,

im enjoying getting my n/a supra ready for the summer and will be my first track day too. Lightweight can only improve performance and handling as you know.

my first lightweight parts i have are wheels and racing seats, rear seats are out too.

What i would like to know is how can i reduce more weight for the least amount of money?

i've mmmm'ed and rrrrr'ed over taking out the air conditioning system, anyone know how much that weighs?

david

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Unless you get very anal. This isnt worth it is it?

If your a few stone over weight your better off losing weight yourself than striping the supra.

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Miko, so what weight reduction mods would you recommend on an NA which will also keep the front to rear weight distrubution ratio?

Would removing the spare wheel and changing the front seats for light weight ones keep the balance? Maybe install the battery in the boot?

the air con id say, as the pumps are heavy,

strip all the interior and thats it!

the bare minimum is going to be the lightest, but you have to ask yourself what are you wanting the car for,

speed/track or a comfy street car.

Doors weigh a ton, gut them out completely, but don't get T boned! What's all this about keeping front to rear weight percentage? You want to shift it rearwards if you can!

Doors weigh a ton, gut them out completely, but don't get T boned! What's all this about keeping front to rear weight percentage? You want to shift it rearwards if you can!

So most weight reduction should be done to the front half of the car? why is this?

thanks.

Because the supra is nose heavy.

You want to take weight off the front which should shift the balance more to the rear which in theory should balance the cars handling charateristics

moving the battery for weight distribution to the back sounds good (and easy) will do that next week. i've not got coilies to help with distribution so this will help.

on the removing of the air conditioning unit, is this popular to do?

i will be using my car for everyday use so not going to go crazy gutting her out, but also want to have a bit of poke on track days.

also i hear removing the cat converters on n/a makes too much noise so thinking removing just the one. front or rear? any ideas?

raven: i'm on a diet

been looking at the fibreglass doors, too expensive for me but but good weight reduction to the £

Just out of interest, adjustable ride height suspension (corner weighting the car) does not, and cannot alter front to rear weight distribution in any meaningful way (Caveat is if you were to jack the rear ride height up to 4 feet and remove the front overhang so it didn't scrape the ground, you would have a lot more static weight on the front wheels, but within sane limits it will have negligible effect).

oh and also about moving the battery to the rear, would i take it all the way to the back or keep it within the line of the rear axel?

thanks chris

Ideally keep it as low as possible and within the wheelbase. A lightweight race battery in the LHR footwell would be OK. Caveat is for drag racing where you do not necessarily want a low C of G. In an ideal situation you want no weight in the form of overhang beyond the front or rear wheels. A good quick guide to a well balanced stock road car with a front engine is to see how much further forward than the front wheel centreline the foremost part of the engine is. Examples, bad = many FWD Saabs, good = Mazda RX-7 FD's.

Take a look at ryan g project thread

thanks for the threads and info guys, been doing a lot of reading on here and got some great idea's. will post some pics in a couple months.