where are you guys finding those euro bumper crush tubes? I did a search and nothing came up.

I weight my battery and it weight in at 65lbs. New battery MJ680 is 14lbs.

Door Panels, handles, door pockets,speakers and all weight in at 35lbs.
RS panels were 5lbs total.

Yes, I have looked at Jim Calzia's web page
I weight everything on a Doctors balance beam scale, so mine are accurate for my car. Car is a '85 carrera, so weight probably differ from the earlier cars, aka heavier.

Thx msailer. Sounds like you have a really heavy battery. I also did not pick up that you were changing to a battery that isn't stretable (at least for those in areas colder than LA).

If you balance a beam type scale before weighing, it will be accurate unless weighing something of just an ounce or so (friction at the bearings).

It does sound like some things are really heavy on the Carreras - like the whole interior door assy you mentioned. I think that is what confused Thom & me - you compared the whole assy not just the panels. BTW, motivated crazies can remove the sound deadener inside the doors...

Rockf - I don't know where to get the crush tubes (maybe only in Europe) but that is what I've seen people do to maintain the safety of the bumper (or maybe 'some' safety). Did you try a search? It's been posted on. Or you could call Stoddards.

Adding lightness again-
 

I'm with you guys, I've gutted my interior, got racing seats, replaced many things under the hood, and am looking into replacing some body parts with fiberglass- RennSpeed systems has a lot of good things for great pricing.

Keep in mind that as important as the magnitude of the weight removed, the position from which it is removed is equally important. Removing 5# from the middle of the car is nowhere near as effective as removing 5#s from either of the extreme ends of the car.

Don't forget to rip out that pesky resale value!!

George, if there is an early car in your future, make it the near future. The prices have been really going up in recent years. Of course you would want an early S and their prices are going through the roof.

why not ditching the whole window crank mechanism and use the R style straps? Two leather straps and a fastener of sorts im sure weighs quite a bit less than cranks.

A lot of this is sound advice. I stripped out my '74's interior, which included the door panels, parcel shelf, rear seats, sound deadening, side rear quarter panels and most of the gooey stuff beneath, and came away 90 pounds lighter. The battery is a behemoth - so if you go with a race battery, you can save another 40 or so pounds, plus move the new smaller battery to the smuggler's box if you've already stripped out your a/c, so it will be more centered. The battery is the edge of the point of no return. But with that, the 35-pound spare, ten-or-so pound jack, 50 pounds worth of A/C and 100 pounds of interior, you've saved over 225 pounds. The '81 to '83 SCs were the heaviest of the model run, weighing in at about 2700 pounds. At this rate, with this stuff removed, you'll have a car closing in on 'RS Touring spec weight, which was about 2,400. The last 50 pounds you take out to get to a true RS weight class, might entail some expensive propositions, such as race seats, fiberglass bumpers, etc. Regardless, with an SC at about 2,500 pounds as opposed to 2,700, you'll feel the difference.

Search out "Ed Bighi" on this board. He once posted photos of his 2,200-pound SC. Be warned, though - it is an extreme sight. He has little to no interior. Yes, it's raw, but it must work well if he can use stock 3.0 power to kick 3.6 and Turbo butt at Phoenix Int'l Raceway. The best part though is his car looks completely stock. All it's missing are outside rear view mirrors - which must be about 10 pounds per side, if electric. :)

You've got some sound advice here.

Biggest savings are to be made by:

1. Replacing hood and flares with GF or CF
2. Taking out the spare
3. Taking out rear seats and scraping all sound isolation
4. Replacing battery to small one and puttning it into smugglers box
5. Rewiring everything
6. Using coupe tub w/o sunroof


We did all this + lexan windows (to be installed) and topped that by using engine that weigths 170kg instead of 230kg.

Goal is to get under 1000kg (2200lbs)

FWIW, my '78 SC, a US car with virtually no factory options (no roof, AC, power windows, fog lamps, RH mirror, cruise, power antenna etc.) recently weighed in at 2480 lbs. with oil but no fuel. It's in stock condition with standard seats, rear seats, factory AM/FM Blaupunkt.

Biggest savings are to be made by:

also - replace other big panels with CF or FG (deck lid, and esp. bumpers)

if you want to maintain the safety bumpers toss the US type shocks for the Euro crush tubes - word is that saves a fair amt.

One other thing that I haven't seen yet in this thread is to replace the four heavy turn signal housings with a modified plastic setup like what Jack O. and Shawn's Blue Smurf run.
This has got to be a good 30lbs. too.

Personally I don't like the looks of the RS early style signals, and I'm looking for a way to delete the housings and run the stock signal lenses...

I just posted this last week, put this part number into the box at the top left of the screen and it should pull up a link to my post and a link to "add to cart":cool:

91150504603

It's not the biggest, but the most effective wt/ loss that you are after.

effectiveness = weight x distance from ctr. of rotation.

i.e. 10# from the front bumper 4' from the ctr. of rotation is better than 36# .5' from the ctr. of rotation.

Looks like 'ol Ed performed quite a feat getting 500 lb. out of his SC.
Where did this 2700 lb SC thing get started? My factory manual and the Red Book say 2450 lb. It may be more than that but it certainly isn't 2700.

I think Kevin (KevinP73) at Automotive Innovations has this in the works. Call him up.

I think it's actually 2670 or something like that. Part of the later SC higher weights is that A/C became standard, and is inculded in the weight.

There also are bumper blades, which are fiberglass replicas of the stock '74 to '89 bumpers. They save about 20 pounds per end. You can save more if you cut off the tubes that hold up the standard bumpers.

I have a pair of these over at Automotive Innovations in Van Nuys, but probably won't use them. If anyone's interested, I'll cut a deal...

Dunno where the crush tube post is at. My 911 tidbit memory is not partitioned by web site, so it might be on Rennlist, or Early 991 site (less likely) or even on the old Email version of Rennlist before the web site existed. Or you can do ind. research with some parts and a postal scale... post any results. Personally, I solved the entire problem by selling my pretty '75 and getting a '73.... You might think about this before dumping huge amounts of sheckels into your late model car....

BV is right re effectiveness. You can make it even mmore complicated by distingusihing pitch, roll, and yaw.... I've never seen any data on where the CG is on the Z axis, but we can guess.

My procedure is to remove wt. from the rear and not worry much about the front (steel hood). Mine is a street car, and as a paragon of moderation, I plan to keep my sunroof. OTOH, if you recently discoverd a cheap way to deposit a thin, safe layer of glass on lexan side windows, send me an Email. (What does Intel do with all those old obsolete vapor deposition machines, anyway?)....