Weight Reduction Question
 

so yesterday i took out the spare tire from the trunk and all the other crap inside the trunk.

today before work i pushed it all the way and the car felt so much quicker.

is my mind playing tricks on me or is the car actually faster

im thinking that i know that i took off the spare tire so that my brain is thinking that the car is faster. is it that

I would say that it is placebo effect....

The car weighs about 3300 pounds, lets say you pulled out 66 pounds. That is a 2% weight reduction. Fairly hard to pick up on a butt dyno.

Personally, I would rather deal with the weigh and not get stranded w/o a spare. But if you are looking for further weigh savings....The car hold 19 gallons of gas at ~6 pounds per gallon. 114 pounds of gas. Never run more than a 1/4 tank you are saving another 70 pounds.

Yes...:tup:

no doubt placebo, weight saving really doesn't help with time anyway. Unless you can get ride of 400 plus pounds don't bother. To do this you would need to strip the car of EVERYTHING--dash and all.

True, and 66 is probable being generous. I'm thinking 45-50.

Its much easier to just mod your car to get more power. I've heard of a cool place called Fontananissanparts.com!

^ Right, any dyno on that Takeda yet? :p

ok thnx guys

It's not all in your head though. Taking the spare out changed the weight balance of the car, which will make it feel different driving. It's not enough weight reduction on its own to make a notable acceleration difference, but what's helping your head play tricks on you is that the car really does "feel different", just not in the way you wish :)

the rear of the car does feel lighter. i dno if its a good thing because during turns it might not have enough weight so it might under steer a lil or over steer

i think adding more weight to the back will make the car over steer a lil bit more then usual right?

Our cars come from the factory slightly front-heavy compared to how they optimally should be (which is normal for a front-engine rear-wheel-drive design). So yeah, removing weight from the rear without changing anything else is generally a net negative for the car's handling. You'll lose straight-line traction from having less weight over the driving wheels to push them into the road, and you'll gain more oversteer (meaning the rear tends to slide outward in a corner when you approach the car's limits) from the same.

What you really want to do is kill weight from the front of the car rather than the rear, or when lightening all over, make sure you remove more from the front than you do the rear.

Its always easier to take weight out of the rear compared to the front unfortunately!! The lighter rear end and oversteer can be corrected fortunately by playing with the suspension settings (i.e. sway bar settings, alignment settings, coilover adjustments, etc.)

I would only consider taking weight out of the car if its primary goal is racing applications. If its just used as a daily driver and the occasional track day, I wouldn't really bother with it...the time and effort could be put to much better use. Besides, that rear spare tire could really come in handy in that rare instance! Removing weight can also have an effect on interior sound...(you'll start hearing every creak and rattle inside the car when too much is removed!)

Scott

I mean - what can be relocated to the rear / removed from the front really? Can we get a list going? If i remember right... we are extremely biased towards the front...

You might wanna look over here: http://www.the370z.com/brakes-suspen...on-thread.html

Obviously the rear is easy if you want to do it: strip out all the carpet/foam/plastic/spare/subwoofer/etc. In the front the largest easy thing is the battery: replace it with a lightweight one and/or relocate it to the trunk. You can also kill the windshield washer fluid system (or at least drain all the fluid out of it) to save a bit of weight up front, if you don't mind using a squeegee whenever it gets dirty. Beyond that, dropping sprung weight from the front of the car involves some pretty serious tradeoffs for a daily driver.

im just gonna put the spare tire back without the Styrofoam stuff because its pain in the *** trying to take out the tire when all that stuff is in the way. and also i think the car makes that squeeking sounds because of the Styrofoam.

i need to find a good location to put mtx woofer that i was thinking of using.