Cheap Track car weight reduction

[Jusepi]

Hey guys,

Well to start, I have a 1981 sereis two RA40 that I no longer have any use for (as a day to day driver).

I has the 18rg head and twin 40mm webber carbs. i am planning a ram-air induction and 45hp nitrous setup. I will also be chopping the exhaust and fitting a side pipe exiting under the passenger side door...

The car will become a kind of weekend track only car for places like Wakefield park etc...

My question is this, has anyone turned one of these cars into a track car and if so what were the things they removed, how wild did they go with the weight reduction? I would love to get the thing down to 750-800 kg's

I am planning to gut the interior and replace all the windows with plexiglass (bar windscreen ofcourse). Also remove both front and rear bumpers to be replaced with one inch box steel in order to brace the chassis as it apears the bumpers do?

some one-off strut braces made from one inch box steel also will be welded on.....yes I do know how crazy this all sounds! but to make this thing even a tad brisk I need to go all out!!

Any advice? my budget is around $1000....

Before anyone tries to talk me out of the Nitrous, I am in no way worried about the engine. It is an 18rc bottom end with the rg head. I have a spare head and I think i could get a new engine quite cheap so, if it melts (which it will lol) i will simply trailer the car back home and replace!

Tim

[MR22ZZ]

cheapest thing you can do is strip out the carpet then grab some dry ice put it on the floor and hack out the sound deadening. Should pull about 10-20 kgs of stuff out.

[merc-blue]

Dont bother buying NO2 it it very illlegal on all race tracks in australia, even at a track day

Hardly crazy,
strip it bare, cut all the glue from the body joins and use a wire brush wheel on a drill to cut any body deadner off the underside.

Remove EVERY non vital part. eg run only 1 windscreen wiper and use a wiper motor that is smaller/lighter than your existing. if its a trackday car remove all the grills and lights (except brake lights) and replace the whole front facia with alloy mesh.

Cut as much material out of the doors as you can so its a bare outter skin and use 2 tech screws to hold the windows up and have no winder mechs. remove all the door locks etc,

grind as much of the foam out of the back of the dash pad as possible and if its mounts to steel cut that all out.

800Kgs without a cage should be very easy,
I have built up cars under that with full cages (including 2 drop legs bars in sills etc, far more comprehesive that your adverage cage) and full steel bodies

[big_zop]

Just make sure you can still remove the engine if you weld on your strut brace, especially if you plan on replacing it often. Get some more info up about your car, make a members thread and link to here for help. And dont forget to post up what you do as all too often people ask questions like this and dont put any of their own results up. I look forward to see what you come up with.

Going on what the others have said, it might be obvious but take ut anything else that isnt necessary. I dont know much about the RA40 but generic stuff would be all trims not required, brackets (most should be spot welded on so just drill those out), wiring not required. A light wieght seat should hold you better than the stocker but can easily eat up your budget so see if you can find a decent second hand one (one was just sold not too long ago here). Another area for investigation will be the fuel tank - it will most likely be metal and weight a lot so sea what you can find for replacing it. You will find that you are merely reducing the effect of all the weight you are putting in as i dont think there would be too much surplus items that can be removed, like modern cars.

Another good thing to look at is weight distribution and its affect on corner balance and the polar moment of inertia. Can you relocate the battery to offset the driver (and keep it as low as possible) and the heavy bumpers at either extremity will be doin you no favour in that regard (but might be handy in an accident because we all arent infallable ) And the same goes with any standard side intrusion protection, keep it till you get a cage.

Oh, and dont forget to get a starting point from a weighbridge or similar.