Hi All

My fury is undergoing some major winter overhauling and changes (including a strip down and re-powder coat of the chassis). As such I have a lot of opportunities for mods and lightening.

So far, my obvious candidates for lightening things are:

• Flywheel (4 kg)
  
• Bonnet (already done) 4KG
  
• padded seats to fibreglass seats (10kg)
  
• Fabricating my own fuel tank to move the majority of the mass down into the transmission tunnel, reducing polar moment of inertia but not necessarily saving weight
  

Cuting the excess off every bolt, saved me quite a bit and losing the spare wheel etc, and just carry a tube in a can

steve

Lithium battery. Costs a couple of hundred more than the likes of an Odyssey, but will save you 4 or 5 kg! Worth it when you consider that plenty spend a couple of hundred quid on CF parts that might save 0.5 kg here and there!

quote:

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Originally posted by scootz
Lithium battery. Costs a couple of hundred more than the likes of an Odyssey, but will save you 4 or 5 kg! Worth it when you consider that plenty spend a couple of hundred quid on CF parts that might save 0.5 kg here and there!

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Yup - personal dieting also factors, and am doing that Let's see if Sparco make a racing banana-hammock.

I'd not thought of lithium, and the car does have a plumbed in fire extinguisher anyway. It's on a red-top battery mounted on the floor in the engine bay, but that's moving now for two reasons:
1) i need the space back to put in some much needed triangulation missing there
2) I trashed it, so it needs to be replaced.

My cunning plan is to put a pair of red-tops (smaller ones) in the transmission tunnel, or somewhere else low down.

So far, great ideas though. Chopping bolts down is a good idea - i have a friend who races TR7s and he drills his bolts through - makes sense if they're correctly loaded in tension and not shear.

bang

Alloy maincase for the gearbox?

I know you're stuck on the pinto but there is excess weight there obviously.

What are you running in the way of wheels/brakes. Big performance benefits can come from lightrening rotating and unsprung mass.

I'm on a non-magnesium set of alloys, and hi-spec 4 pot calipers and cross drilled vented disks - not that much heavier than the solid ones i swapped them for.

Alloy bellhousing is a good point - I have found a company that makes an alloy cast that is the same shape as the original iron one and is as strong - the ford alloy bellhousing is quite a bit wider. that's a few kg saved.

Change to an aeroscreen? Lose a big chunk of glass, wipers, demist....

Same thing was asked to PPC last month.

THey said excess loom chopping and lighter more expensive metals for full roll cages and structural parts.

Keeping water and oil pipes to a minimum to keep capacity down may help.

Ali Rad?
Light wheels?
Full geometry set up so it handles the best it can.

quote:

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Originally posted by FuryRebuild
bang

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Use foam and bin bag racing seats will save another 4kg over the fibreglass ones and be cheaper.
See http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=152517

If Liam's right and you're running a Pinto I'd focus my attention and £££ to sorting that out. From memory a Pinto weighs about 120kg, a 4AGE or K-series weighs 80kg-90kg, a BEC much less, Duratec ???. So there's an easy 30Kg there that would not only reduce overall weight but give you a big improvement in the balance of the car. Sorting out the bell housing and plumbing could be part of the upgrade.

I'm looking at losing 30kg's off my upcoming little bec build. The car itself will be very difficult to lighten any more than designed. But me, I'm a little above ideal design mass.

Started the diet already.

Bonus will be smaller clothes, so lighter race suit!

Cheers,
Nev.

[Edited on 1/2/12 by Neville Jones]

Thanks Rosco - my head's really churning now...

Someone has a complete 2.5 200bhp unit on ebay, all ancilliaries I would need including turbo for £1500, or bearing in mind I was going to fabricate exhausts and inlet manifolds for my pinto, the amount of work to do similar for the duratec won't be any more - the pinto was also going to get a megajolt ignition to manage it.

So, keep my pair of twin45 dellortos, new manifold, new exhaust, megajolt. I'd expect to see similar power to that I get now, but with a pleasantly revvy engine that weighs the same as a spec of dust. power to weight ratio counts for all.

I'm also respeccing springs and dampers after cornering force create me anti-roll bars, so hopefully the change in weight won't affect the ARB too much.

Any thoughts on my duratec configuration?

Exploding batteries??? Meh! In today's namby-pamby world they would be cased in 6"s of lead if they were really so dangerous!

Things sometimes go wrong... that's life! The power of the Internet means that we all get to hear about those few-and-far-between incidents and it results in hysteria!

Pull yourselves together you big girls blouses!

Scootz - do you know of a retailer?

I picked up a couple of cards when I was at the Autosport show. I'll look them out for you when I'm back from hols next week.

Tellingly, the Odyssey or was it Powervamp or was it Enersis (I cant keep up ) chap at the show said they were watching the lithium 'scene' very closely and anticipated moving over when the tech-costs came do a bit.