Weight Reduction

Originally Posted by Rusty

Porsche used to fill the chassis tubes on the 917 racer with N2 and had a gauge on the dash. If the gauge dropped pressure. The chassis had a crack and would fail in short time. Causing an accident. So it gave the drivers a chance to slow down.

Originally Posted by victorofhavoc

That. Is. Amazing. And absolutely genius.

Happy holidays!

Originally Posted by Rusty

Back in the 70's. Some Nascar crews chiefs used to stuff extra fuel line in the chassis. Sometimes being able to add another 3~4 gallons of fuel. This would give them another lap or two before pitting.

Originally Posted by Hotrodz

You are going to always chasing something in the Z when it comes to balancing. All bets are off for those of us TT kits. I also added a larger bash bar to mount the splitter to. The biggest bang for the buck is a lightweight battery. You can gain more weight functional control by getting lighter rotors and wheels. If you are going for mostly racecar then get rid of creature comforts like the AC and condenser. You can go all out and remove the heater core and blowers. From there it is all about suspension up front. Get a good set of coilovers.

The rear you will want a wing and contrary to popular belief they do work at relatively slow speeds. Most the tracks I run on are less than 2 miles long and heavy car or not most everyone in a competitive series runs one if they are allowed. I was shocked how much the wing helped on the Miata! We took it off and she was ha handful on anything over 45 mph.

Also having spent some time with the crew from Nissan that has been to the last few ZDAYZ events and them providing us a tour of the Nissan Heritage Museum, which is not open to the public we talk about the need for better grip and rotation of the rear of the car. Jeremy promptly took me over to one of the 280z race cars and showed me their solution. There was a post welded on each side of the rear wheel well were they added weight directly over the wheel to gain additional mechanical grip. He said the additional weight was worth it in lap times. In fact the Nissan Pace Car they brought to ZDAYZ, a 300 Z, they added about 300 lbs to the trunk to make it behave on the track due to the power level of the car. It was essentially their Trans AM car. Anyway Jeremy suggested I do the same as they did with the 280z. We will see how well the wing does.

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Originally Posted by Jmatchley86

The trackspec ones work very well. I have them on my car and it solved my heat issue.

Originally Posted by Wigjiggy

I spent a lot of time stripping out weight, just to gain a LOT of it back with the monster cage, fire system and cool shirt. Still ST3/TT3 HP/weight ratio with NASA, but always looking for additional weight reduction. Looks like my best option now is to hit the New Years resolution hard and loose some driver weight.

Originally Posted by 03threefiftyz

You could probably drop another 10-15lbs overall by pulling out the door bars since you have NASCAR bars....

Originally Posted by 03threefiftyz

These are my doors fwiw...~4lbs each:

Originally Posted by 03threefiftyz

These are my doors fwiw...~4lbs each:

Originally Posted by victorofhavoc

With a full cage, your definition of "door" could be quite malleable, wigjiggy. All you need is a shape/contour, a hinge, and a "lock". This could be just a two layer carbon or Kevlar laminate and weigh 3-4 lbs or less. The locking and hinge mechanisms don't even need to be structural so you could shave some grams there...

Originally Posted by victorofhavoc

With a full cage, your definition of "door" could be quite malleable, wigjiggy. All you need is a shape/contour, a hinge, and a "lock". This could be just a two layer carbon or Kevlar laminate and weigh 3-4 lbs or less. The locking and hinge mechanisms don't even need to be structural so you could shave some grams there...