Weight saving - adding lightening

[A'PEXi]

i think you've done well already, keeping its standard weight... its hard to compare a race car to a car which is still driven on the streets and needs extra bits like a stero/aircon etc i think something that can be done tho is the lightweight battery as you mentioned and possibly some extra stripping if you haven't already done it (boot trims etc..)

[Babalouie]

Leave me alone. I haven't had much sleep

I was thinking chro moly, but reading Bab's post at the time I read and typed magnesium intead.

Hehe...wouldn't wanna be in a magnesium rollcage if the car started to burn

[scathing]

I'm remembering high school chemistry when the teacher dropped a small chunk of magnesium into a beaker of water....I wouldn't want to accidentally put the car in a lake either.

[Jing]

so whats the go with magnisium forged wheels then? cant be driven in the rain? or coated to be fine

[Babalouie]

so whats the go with magnisium forged wheels then? cant be driven in the rain? or coated to be fine

Anything made out of pure Mg is pretty explosive and will dissolve imediately in say salt water but for a car, you wouldn't make anything out of magnesium unless you alloyed it with other metals to make it stable.

But Mg still corrodes over time and so a set of Mg wheels won't last as long as an aluminium wheel. Other weird-isms is that if a Mg wheel catches fire, it can never be put out until it burns out....not even when the whole thing is pushed underwater.

[Justin Fox]

Interesting, "mag" wheels.

[black200]

Anything made out of pure Mg is pretty explosive...

watch some videos of the oldschool racing cars that crashed with magnesium wheels. no-one within 100m survived the accident including spectators... burn baby burn

that is the reason they call them "mag" wheels. They used to be made of magnesium... last i checked magnesium LM's cost close to 8k in 18x9

though i'm sure these days they 'stabilise' them as baba mentioned

[Keven]

I completly stripped the sound deadening out of the Hachi... weighed it and it came in just under 30kg!!!

Apart from that, CF or KR-CF panels and get rid of most of your interior...

By this stage your brain would have vibrated out the side of your head... so thats an extra... what 4kg?

The question is, do you want to take away from the comfy street car-esq thing happening?

[scathing]

But Mg still corrodes over time and so a set of Mg wheels won't last as long as an aluminium wheel.

Note to Self: Stick to forged monoblock Al wheels instead of spending up and buying Mg ones.

[Alfadog]

A friend's Boxster once caught fire. The roof was up - and the supports for the roof are made at least partially of magnesium. I was not there but he says it BURNED like hell - and lit up the entire area quite well.

[yellowcake]

pure Mg is way too soft for any structural application

there is rarely a case where exotics such as Mg are used in their pure form, besides... materials are used in a prescriptive manner, so alloying is usually necessary to achieve some other quailties, strength, NVH, heat, corrosion resistance etc

if you guys think magnesium burns hard, you should see fibreglass! Difficult to ignite, but once started and the resin catches, holy shit stand back!

I tend to think weight reduction should be a prescriptive remedy rather than an all-out attempt to make the car a feather on wheels. Especially as was said earlier: it's so easy to add power these days. There is such a thing as making the car too light, sometimes a bit of ballasting helps the car remain stable and can be used to advantage when shifting weight. If you strip your boot, how light is the rear of the car going to be under heav braking? Expect the rear to do LESS braking than the front in these circumstances.

$22 is the going rate for public weighbridges in NSW, but they dont allow you to be in the car while it's getting weighed... thus making the number slightly inaccurate since you'll usually be racing with a full tank of fuel plus yourself in the car. Also, the public weighbridge attendant is less likely to be bothered to let you weight each axle on a car - they're plenty happy to let a truck do it since they can make money off trucks by fining them if any of their axles are overweight.

the solution: use a tip/ transfer station/ scrap metal yard weightbridge (as was mentioned earlier) if u get friendly with the guy that mans the gatehouse, they wont mind if you come back and try different weight settings alternatively there is a garage in Bondi (Rainbow automitive?) that has a weightbridge that weighs each wheel... now THATS information you can use for a prime suspension setup

if you wanna do a home job, you can use a plank of wood (4x6 is fine) and your bathroom scales. jack the car up, rest the wheel on the plank and make it act as a lever onto the scales, by knowing the distance on either side of the timber and the reading on the scale you can divide back and find the weight of that corner of the car, works well and is accurate to less than a kilogram (whereas the weighbridge is only as good as the nearest 10kg)

[Babalouie]

Note to Self: Stick to forged monoblock Al wheels instead of spending up and buying Mg ones.

Check this out....mind you, these are Mg wheels made in the 1960s which simply can't compare to say a Watanabe Mg wheel which is made of a much better alloy.

http://www.roadsters.com/wheels/#Mag

[Justin Fox]

Spent hours taking out the tar in the boot today, fun fun fun....

NOT!!!

My scales aren't too accurate, but about 1.5kg I reckon... feels about as heavy as a stereo head unit.

[Jing]

wow u say you do........ impressive

[Omawari_San]

After a weighbridge at Mascot (you pay $22 to get your car weighed) I got a figure of 1480kgs!

Its cheaper if you just go to a "farming-store". Don't know the name in english. The places where you can buy forage and fertiliser for farming. The allways have a weight too for calculating the price. Normaly they should just let you weight for free if you ask nice. At least they do that here.