Power to weight ratio
 

So I was wonder if there were some easy mods (light weight battery ) that we as Z owners could use to improve our power to weight ratio .I have a DD myself and I was just wondering if it would be posssible to have a livable/drivable car and shave weight down to say 3000LBs or less could it be done ?

First thing that comes to mind is removing spare tire and replacing the factory seats for lighter ones. Hood, doors, and hatch are already aluminum so switching to CF would show little to no difference.

3100 should be doable without ripping out the interior or possibly stripping the car down to its chassis to find things to pull off to reduce weight.
Basically removing the spare, silicone hoses, plastic glass, lightweight brake rotors, intake, exhaust, hfc,removing radio, carbon fiber hood, trunk and fenders, removing engine covers, rugs, and lightweight racing seats all should drop you down close to 200lbs. Adding things like better brake lines, pads, oil cooler, power steering cooler will add some weight back though. So maybe 170ish lbs?

There's easy, then there's effective. Even dropping weight has a "cost", whether it's convenience or monetary. First off - Do you plan to drive the car everyday? Do you want it completely stripped out? Want to keep Air conditioning, radio, passenger seat ?

After you've established your goals, here we go: First, just take as much crap as possible out of your car. Second, prioritize UN-SPRUNG weight.

#1 in terms of bang-for-buck will likely be wheels. The sport wheels aren't terrible, but dropping to the smallest and lightest wheel, with the lightest (and stickiest) tire will make a huge difference. The michelin pilot Super Sport is not only one of the best all-round tires on the road, it's substantially lighter than one might expect. The "effect" of a single pound of UN-SPRUNG weight loss is arbitrarily considered to be 5-6 lbs of SPRUNG weight.

After that, go with the midset that 100lbs is worth about 0.1-0.2 seconds in a quarter mile. Determine what you can sacrifice, and go from there.

Yank that heavy flywheel outta there while you're at. BIG bang for the buck.

:iagree: Unbelievably good tires. I can't say enough about them.

Buy a turbo kit amd slicks, way cheAper

The best bang-for-the-buck weight mod is definitely light wheels/tires, and there's no real "tradeoff" there, it's all win. Going right along with that would be lightweight (2pc) brake rotors, but they're a little pricey for what you get, and probably mostly only worth it on the front pair. Light seats are obvious. Pricey, but also hold you in better.

A good cheap one for dropping front weight is to ditch the whole windshield-washer-sprayer system. Or you could just empty out the tank completely dry to get most of the same benefit without permanently removing anything.

You can drop a pretty decent chunk of static weight from the car by doing the combo of emptying out the trunk (subwoofer, spare, foam, plastics, etc), removing the big heavy battery up front, and relocating to a smaller battery like the PC680 mounted in the newly-empty trunk area. I list this as one big combo-upgrade, because if you just empty out the trunk and don't do the battery work as well, you're shifting the car's weight balance in the "bad" direction.

If you do both, the weight balance is basically unaffected (if anything, it goes barely in the "good" direction), and you get a significant net weight drop. Going off an estimate from one of my own old posts, you'd get just under 70lbs of weight drop from this, with a slight bias towards front weight drop.

(EDIT: the old numbers I came up with were 35 from the front and 29 from the rear, but that didn't include plastics/foam/etc from the trunk, just the big ticket items: spare, subwoofer, and battery swap)

definely remove the engine. that thing is heavy.

How much do you weigh? :roflpuke2:Just kidding. It may be easier to add more HP to get the same P/W ratio.

What if I've installed a 10" zenclosure with a sub and an amp. Will that make it ok to remove the spare, tools, and Bose sub?

Lightweight wheels and tires are nice, but seriously "best bang for the buck" weight reduction? What are you smoking? How much did you pay for all 4 wheels and tires?

Best bang for the buck is removing uneccesary **** from the trunk etc. That's FREE.

After that pretty sure best bang for buck is a lightweight battery. Then maybe flywheel(~16lbs less rotational mass), lightweight underdrive pulleys(not much static weight saving, but losing rotational mass is nice).
Keep in mind the flywheel will make the car a bit less streetable, more difficult to smoothly go from a stop. Depends how tolerant you are of things like that.

If you get other power adding mods, keep in mind that some of these options often can save a bit of weight too, win/win situation.
Deleting cats by switching to longtubes or test pipes saves quite a bit of weight. I just got my longtubes installed, and when I get around to getting a catback, I plan on probably getting a single exit exhaust, to save a few extra pounds.

All the CF hoods I have seen actually WEIGH MORE THAN STOCK. Don't get that garbage with weight reduction in mind.

Anyways there's a whole weight reduction thread over here

Wheel/tire are best bang for the buck (remember you do not have to spend 4k on Volk/Advan to get less weight), but also wheel/tire combo do more than just weight. Balance, better grip, etc.

The wheels/tires are best bang for the buck because they're *rotating*, *unsprung* weight (and as above, better handling). They count for a lot more than dropping static weight elsewhere on the car. And like Dreamer said, you can get them cheap. I spent about $1,200 on a set of cheap light Forgestar rims in 18x10 + 18x11 (these days, I wish I had gone 18x10 square though), and ~$1,000 flat on a nice set of Conti DW to match.

Stripping the trunk is free, but like I said, it's actually bad for the car unless you shift some weight to the rear to compensate with the battery job. The trunk+battery work is still cheaper than wheels+tires, and might be comparable if you leave out grip/handling updates, but it's also not an all-win proposition. Some people just aren't going to be happy with no subwoofer and a bunch of extra noise and/or ugliness and/or unsupported trunk floor from the stripped rear. That and it's a pretty labor-intensive job.

Why is it that every Porsche owner hates the Michelin PS2? I shouldn't say "every" because I was sifting through reviews on TireRack for this particular tire. It received a lot of bad reviews and mostly from Porsche owners.

I loved the PS2's on my last car. I just picked up the Conti DW's this time around because they're cheaper to buy/replace and still perform reasonably well. The PSS's, I assume, are even better than the PS2 were, but I've never driven them.

OH! So the PS2 is not the same as PSS? I thought PS2 was an alias for PSS (P*S^2).

That's MY BAD.:facepalm:

Any preferred light weight pulleys ? I was looking at NST also did you do the install yourself ? I here the berk CBE save on weight and gives you a + in the HP dept aswell is this true

The FI exhaust also saves weight, if you're looking at light exhausts. Pulleys are controversial on the risk factor, lots of opinions on whether it's a good or bad idea. They do help a little though ;)

+1 for the FI exhaust!

Zenclosures emailed me back and said their 10" box is around 35lbs. So after installing that, I'm good to remove the spare tire I suppose.

:iagree:
that was my first mod, love it.

'unsprung' weight is what I would concentrate on. and the side benefit is the 'sleeper' effect, no loud noises to attract unwanted attention.

flywheel
2pc rotors
crank pulley
wheels

Removing the spare tire saves a bit of weight.

A FI system is $5K and can get you a minimum of 50HP at the very very basic level. The Michelins, a set of wheels and a flywheel cost nearly $3K and can't come anything close to what 50HP can do for you. Where do you guys learn your math, the Rick Perry campaign?

Oh yeah, go buy a base model if you care so much about the weight. It is nearly 100lbs lighter than the sport

i forgot to ask what are the favorite two piece rotors you guys use

Well, FI is undoubtedly the king of pwr:weight for the buck, no denying that. Some of us don't want to go FI though, it's a big leap.

I have DBA's up front, they're a little bit cheaper than racingbrake rotors. But DBA only makes front rotors (as far as i know) and Racingbrake makes front AND rear 2pc rotors.

Actually the Berk CBE is heavier than stock. If you want to save weight with a CBE your best bet would be the Fast Intentions or a single exit exhaust.

Sorry meant HFC by berk DOH!:icon14:

You are just using the logic of one item though.
Power/weight is great from FI, but wheel/tire (and flywheel I guess) gives you less weight, which leads to better power and more grip, better balance, etc.

Yes, this thread is originally about power to weight, but you also have to calculate into other factors when balancing a car the moment you throw a monetary value onto what you are getting.

Stupid question, but what is an FI system? When I see FI Fast Intentions is what comes to mind lol.

Forced Induction i.e. turbo or supercharger kit.

RacingBrake makes some nice ones. I've got a set but haven't installed them yet. Don't have the calipers to go with them yet :roflpuke2: