how are you guys opening the doors when you gut them out, are you making a bracket to hold the door handle and support the linkage ?

 

Plastic coated steel wire and u-bolts. Run them from the latch towards the front of the door. Simplest solution

 

picture of this ?

 

nevermind , used google

 

Bluetooth.

 

I'll weigh it tmrw, but its a few pounds - maybe 4-5? Its the jack hole I'll replace with a flat piece of tiny gauge sheet metal and chop off that little bracket still there. Just a little weigh loss thought for those on the "quest". I am thinking about cutting the trunk "scoop" pan out too and doing some very thin gauge stuff there too. Keep the frame rails and build a small piece for the wing mount.

 

Nice Mr. Wob. I'm considering doing that once I find out if it's allowed in my class. Update when you have the weight of the removed section. Are you going to weld or rivet the new sheet in?

 

Curious of weight reduction of a lot of these aero things. I was debating riveting in CF in the trunk dip, but didn't know if there is any flex in the area.

 

I've seen the trunk floor replaced with lightweight sheet-metal on Miata race cars over at TC Design Fab, looks like a legitimate way to go, at least for "XP" class Auto-X.

 

This is what I netted from removing the seat belts and seat belt towers.

A total of about 11.5 pounds

 

The way to go for XP would be no trunk floor at all. Don't know why you'd replace it with anything when it's not required.

 

This is dang long thread, and I surely haven't read all eleventy hunderd pages, so ya'll forgive me if this has been mentioned already.

My buddy FourEagles is a Colin Chapman disciple. He has "added lightness" to his 90 Miata in the most unusual ways. He drilled holes in his ignition switch key. Drilled holes in his bell housing. Dang, he's got holes in his hood and trunk braces. Course he also took out heavy stuff like his convertible top. His, street driven stock engine car could run with my stock weight, m45 powered 91 just due to his lower curb weight.
Another buddy, an ex motorcycle racer, worked on my track car years ago for a full Saturday. Nothing he took out was huge, but at the end of the day he had 18 pounds worth of crap in a box that was ends of long bolts, excess wires, scrapped off undercoating, unused brackets, light bulbs etc etc. Real silly stuff, I thought, until I saw the total weight he had accumulated.

Made me a believer in the back packer philosophy of ounces makes pounds.

 

While you were cutting that bracket out, did you ever wonder how much that piece of sound deadener (asphalt? visible in the picture) stuck to the bottom weighs?

 

Great read so far. Has anyone thought of cutting all of the brackets underneath the dash or what about cutting away the rear quarter and replacing it with an aftermarket over?

 

When you combine it with the same tar that is on the inside fire wall and the drain plugs in the interior floor, it is a pretty good sized wad of tar. It is worth going after.

Using a heat gun and various sized scrapers makes pretty quick work of removing it.

 

We've cut out the rear quarters and put a fiberglass overlay panel on. Primary purpose of this was to get the wider track (+4"), and cover the slicks, but with the thin race fiberglass vs the steel we removed it has to weigh less - I just didn't thnk to do this while we were modding the car.

 

This is really reaching for small gains, but another place is the chip guard on the lower sides of the car. Obviously, this is mainly worth while if you are going to be repainting the car.

To go totally nuts, strip the tub, and dip it to remove all caulk and sound deadener that Mazda put on the thing. While it is naked, you can seam weld it too! I did it for my Prod car, but kick myself for not doing a before and after weight to see what we did.

 

I spent a whole month stripping every bit of seam sealer and undercoating on the car. Someone told me it cost them $1,900.00 to do it chemically. It seems like a lot until you try to do it manually. If I ever do this again, I am going to pony up and pay to have it done.

 

Emilio did it on one of his cars too, if I remember correctly the tub lost ~30lbs. Maybe he can chime in with the exact figure.

 

Problem is, there's some areas that I want silicone, undercoating, etc. so if you strip it all off, you'll be adding it back to certain areas later. Nice thing about it though is having a bare tub to weld to without having to prep for hours first..

-Ryan