Odyssey isn't that bad. I looked into your Genesis info above. There is indeed a matching Genesis battery for the PC680, which is the NP18-12 that you can see here: ENERSYS Genesis NP18-12BFR . Just based on comparing pics/specs/descriptions, I'm pretty sure that's the same internals as the PC680. It's just a different jacket and different terminals, and a little under half the price (~$50 vs ~$115). I'm sure it's a cheaper option for the same thing electrically, but there is some value in having screwed-in SAE posts and a thicker plastic jacket. Maybe not $65 worth of value, but really the savings there are pretty small potatoes compared to the cost of operating the car over the life of the battery, not to mention all the other related modding you're doing if you care enough to drop battery weight.

Why does everyone go pc680? The PC625 is lighter yet more powerfull. It does have acid though and slightly bigger. But lighter would be the choice in a weight reduction thread no?

The PC625 is slightly lighter and has slightly more AH of capacity, but it has less cranking ability. The difference isn't much, so who knows, it might be enough. Try it and see!

If anyone cares.

I couldn't find the weight of a 2013 base sport. Nissanusa.com PDF file on the different models doesn't list sport weights for any car. So I went and weighed it. With a full tank of gas, all fluids, added features of splash guards, and carpeted floor mats she came in at a mind blowing 3,361! I can't believe a car made with tons of aluminium can be so heavy. So far I've been able to shed 59 pounds but no idea what else can go that I'd wouldnt miss. Intake and exhaust should put it close to 100lbs but after that I think ill be done.

I'm down to around 29xxlbs, but then again I went to extremes :tup:. You know, with all the safety requirements for cars today, and all the creature comforts people want, 3,300 really isn't that heavy... lighter than a Camaro and Mustang, lol.

thats gas tho...lol

What fun with all the weight reduction is buying quality replacements for everything...so that you won't miss anything just found a lighter replacement.

:iagree: I really have fun trying to find areas to cut weight. People think I'm crazy what I've done to my Z.... I find it a challenge!

Yeah but with modest weight reduction, about 400lbs more than what I'm used to and that had AWD, huge FMIC, heavy two peice drive shaft, 4dr, etc etc. 2900lbs would be perfect.

I know people have already weighed the A/C compressor, but thought I would just add this picture :tup: Who needs A/C anyways!

Just making the call to remove the AC and Radio and all related components completely sucks a *lot* of weight out of the car. All the wiring, tubing, front condensor, the subwoofer and amps, the control modules, the central AC module, the blower, etc. It also frees up a lot of room to work with for custom wiring and dash stuff in the center dash area. There's easily over 100 lbs in just radio and AC junk to be gutted, and most of it's forward of the centerline of the car, or at least near the center. Only the subwoofer is out to the rear.

The other easy target on a track car is killing the airbag system and seatbelt tensioners, etc (if you're moving to harnesses + race seats). The airbag modules are all reasonably heavy (especially the two frontmost ones), and the curtain ones are way up high on the car (= not good).

This battery weighs 3lbs, I've been running it for the past few months, works great.

Has not failed to start once. It cranks a little slower in near freezing weather, but that doesn't happen often where I am.

Mounting it was a bit of a pain but I ended up making my own replacement battery tray. Dropped 30lbs total.

Wow, that thing is tiny. No spark issues? TBH, I don't really know the low-level electrical details of how engine ignition systems work, but I was under the impression that basically an engine can't generally run very well on its alternator alone; that the required juice to give a full-power spark comes from the battery (in rapid intermittent bursts as the plug fires), and the relatively-constant output of the alternator is topping off the battery between those bursts. Which is why really tiny batteries always worry me a little, re: potential to lose some of your full spark amperage. I could be way off-base, though!

The battery uses LiFePo4(Lithium Iron Phosphate) chemistry, which has a tremendous power to weight ratio. Its the same battery technology as used in the worlds fastest electric drag motorcycle killacycle. I haven't cracked open the case(its thermo sealed) to check if they are actually A123 cells(generally considered the best LiFePo4 cells), but it does the job quite well.

It is not relying on alternator alone with a small battery. The battery will be slightly discharged after cranking, but will get topped off quickly by the alternator. Voltage gauge reads 14.4 while engine is running.

At this size it doesn't have nearly the capacity (amp hours) of a full size lead acid, but short bursts is what it excels at. The only risk with lower capacity is that you could drain it fairly quickly if you aren't careful. Just don't run electrical without the engine on.

A foot by a foot by a foot?? That's huge! Light, but huge.

Those dimensions are not accurate, its closer to 4-5" cube.

Ahh much better.

Hell at that size and weight, I might consider moving the battery back up to the battery box instead of the trunk. The cabling to the trunk probably outweighs the battery itself :)

:iagree:
I just started talking to Wstar about moving mine but at how light the batteries are getting & efficient, may as well keep it up front.

First thing I saw when you guys moved the batteries was the cable. Thought to myself, kinda defeats the purpose. Then I saw some installed in the middle of the trunk which again I thought, driver weighs 100+ lbs, 30 lbs oem battery was on passenger side, now 15 lbs battery is in the middle of the trunk, again defeats the purpose. If anything the battery should be under the passenger seat.

You're a very negative nancy :P

The cables aren't much compared to the battery weight shift, and more importantly the cable weight is distributed out fairly evenly. Shifting weight from front to rear is always good (unless you actually manage to cross the 50/50 mark). Shifting weight towards the center of the car from where it originally was further out in any direction is always good (driver-vs-passenger can always be corrected later with corner balancing).

Not everything on these jobs may be perfectly ideal, but they still do a lot of good. The placement didn't "defeat the purpose".

Lol no just stating what I see. Hell I have no idea where all the weight should be. I want to get a corner balance done. So far I've removed the stock exhaust, everything in the trunk, windshield washer bottle full of fluid, some engine hoses and brackets and covers etc so I might be killing my cars weight distribution. Adding a battery to it, TS over cats etc, its all going to effect the car some how. Guess ill find out when I'm done.

The rear is much easier to remove excess weight from than the front for sure, which is unfortunately backwards. It all changes when you stop caring about it being a street car. Most of the easy weight removal in the front is stuff you'd never do on a daily-driver (forward interior plastics, airbags, air conditioner, radio, etc).

After my CBE I went and got weighed again. With everything I've taken out and a full tank of gas I'm at 3280. So 81 lbs to date. Good news for me when I go to the strip with 1/4 of gas and passenger seat removed ill be at 3152 :happydance:

I still have a CAI to build, lighter battery, test pipes, wheels and tires, and rotors. I don't think ill break 3000 it will be close.

-34.3 lbs in wheels and tires
-19 lbs battery
-28.4 lbs rotors
Test pipes???
CAI???

Nice. Wanted to know this because I sold my OEM and didn't weigh. I got Gorilla closed end lugs and they're 32.19g each or 1.42lbs total.

Also I weighed my OEM rear 2013 wheel and tire and it was 57.5lbs so heavier than previous years. Forgot to weigh the front :(

Is it safe to say that the real gains of an exhaust upgrade lies in weight savings? If this is the case, I would think that just replacing the stock mufflers would be an upgrade it itself. I guess what I'm asking is out of all sections of the exhaust, which section is worth changing to consider it an "upgrade"....

The engine responds well to exhaust and intake mods in general, thanks to VVEL and the self-tuning it can do with the MAF + Lamba inputs, so I wouldn't say the main purpose of an exhaust upgrade is weight savings, but weight savings can be had there. Since most of the weight is low and to the rear though, it's not the ideal location, but every pound counts in the end :)

Also, I can report now that the electric tape and plastic conduit material in the car's wiring harnesses adds up to approximately 443 lbs of messy, sticky, crap. At least, it feels like that as you pull it all apart ;)

So saving weight in the muffler location is not recommended?

I say remove whatever, whenever. If you have coilovers you're better off since you can corner balance some of the weight around. If you don't have them the track feel will be effected but at least for a DD you're not lugging so much weight around and saving on gas. I'm at least averaging around 23-24mpg city and highway.

ive seen race cars make a box under the headlight, looks really nice, and is out of the way, also not using to much more battery cable. just a thought

I bought one of those Evo2 batteries referenced earlier btw. Planning to stick it back in the stock battery box, once I figure out some mounting and wiring solutions.

Just gonna copy and paste this from a PM I responded to a while ago asking about my setup:

The mounting was a bit of a pain for me, I don't do a lot of fabrication like that, but I was able to make a new battery tray out of stainless steel sheet metal and foam that the battery was packed in and zip ties. Its hard to explain, heh. Here is a small photo album, it duplicated some of the pics for some reason Ballistic Performance EVO2 16cell battery in 370Z - Imgur

Another issue I didn't realize until after I had made the new tray was that there is a white plastic wiring conduit that goes under the battery tray, but it actually sits higher than the mounting points for the tray. The stock tray has bumps where it mounts so that it can clear this piece. I ended up just throwing some little wood shims under my tray so I could clear that which you can just see poking out in the pic.

I had to extend the battery cables since the battery sits so much lower and the stock cables don't have a lot of slack. I got cables from this guy and they are really great quality for the price I think.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-AWG-Custom...:X:RTQ:US:1123
I got one foot each of red and black wire in 6awg, with 1/4" terminal lugs.

I stopped by wstar's place and saw the battery...holy cr@p is it light and tiny.
Minus it being an odd shape, it is light enough to throw like a baseball.

^^^

Are you refferring to the battery chipswithdips posted ? Also did you guys buy the tender aswell...

I don't use a tender, I just don't run any electrical when my engine is off and it hasn't been an issue. I was concerned when I got this that the battery would need to be balance charged, but after checking the individual cell voltages every so often, they have amazingly stayed balanced within a couple millivolts without any special treatment

I just went and measured the voltages again:
3.342V
3.341V
3.340V
3.341V

Can't get much closer than that. This is after daily use for nearly 6 months now.

Here's mine....


Decided to do a lightweight battery. Went with a etx15l which is basically a odyssey pc680, 11lbs. I highly doubt the Braille p2015 puts out what it says it puts out and everyone says Deka makes the brallies anyways. I ran that battery here in ohio for 2 years without issue. Also if you look at Dekas sheets, every ETX battery you find will have identical specs at any store with the same part number! I ended up buying a etx15l from autozone with a Duralast sticker on it.

I had to do a little work to get it to fit right but I had all the stuff so no big deal. I replaced the OEM tray with a lightweight 1/8th peice of aluminium, made 2 paper thin steel tubes to increase the height so the terminals would be at OEM height, and had to buy 2 steel cylinders so the OEM rings had something to fit around as a terminal. The etx batteries don't come with the right kind of terminal top like the OEM battery has. Last I relocated the negative ground wire which worked out perfect because there was a bracket there with the same size holes. Just a simple bolt down. The bracket was holding 2 relays so I just zip tied them to some wires.

All in all I'd guess I saved around 22lbs.




http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps1ce29edf.jpg

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...psfe379e3e.jpg


http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...psd5396d2f.jpg

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e1...ps96c93942.jpg

Yes (and thanks for the install pics Chips, it helps!). I went ahead and got their little digital balance charger too, because the car spends a fair amount of time shut off between events or during electrical work, and it's not impossible that I'll sometimes have battery drain going on as well just from shoddy temporary work or mfg issues (last time, it was my datalogger was draining the battery when it was "off", if I didn't physically disconnect it from car power).

I haven't gotten around to testing it in my car (waiting until I finish the other electrical work), but from what I've seen so far of the specs and the battery itself, I think it'll work great in my car, but keep in mind my car's electrical system is pretty minimal at this point (I've gutted over half of the factory wiring harness - no a/c, no radio, no airbag system, etc). It's probably borderline on a stock car unless you're very diligent about not draining it with the engine off, and/or putting a trickle charger on it all the time.

Thanks alot ChipsWithDips & Wstar.....my car only moves on fridays night and maybe a early morning sunday morning run, then it's stagnant for another 5-6 days.

Why?! Dear lord drive it! I'd be the only millionaire with 150,000 miles Avenrador for crying out loud.

well, now that I removed all the rear hatch interior plastic panels, I decided to look around the underside of the rear-end to see what's what. I had no idea the tow hook piece was so heavy. I'm not saying a weighs a ton, but it's a lot heavier than I thought it would be:

http://i890.photobucket.com/albums/a...4/IMG_1897.jpg