Dao

...picking it up this weekend, very excited! Been looking for one in half-decent condition for a little while now. It's a 1985 model.





The car will not be street driven, it will be trailered to the occasional track day and possibly some drift days. I mostly want this car as a fun little project for experimenting with things, namely weight reduction and improving driveability. Not too fussed about performance gains just yet, just would really like to simplify and neaten up the car. I don't care for improving how the car looks (they look nice enough anyway!) so I won't be doing anything such as body kits or spoilers, or changing wheels simply for looks.

I own a motorcycle shop here in Australia and I've done a lot of messing around reducing weight on my personal dirt bikes with noticeable gain in rideability and handling, so this car is basically a test-run to have a play and satisfy the appetite for a fun, cheap, basic play car that I can have a hands-on approach in improving handling and fun-ness.

There is an automotive weighbridge literally 5 minutes drive from my shop (all back roads, no highway) that I can go to and test-weigh the car, also check weight bias and the like. I also have a good set of scales here for weighing bits and pieces once removed.

I've read Black260z's thread on building a Z31 racecar and also Flacster's thread on weight reduction and gathered a fair bit of information helping me gut some weight from my Z, but wondering if you Z owners can shed some more light on the subject.


The things I have planned for my Z31 so far are:

Remove rear seats
Replace driver and passenger front seats with lightweight race seats (supplied by a mate)
Remove all carpet and sound deadening
Delete aircon and remove all periphery
Remove rear window wiper and associated junk
Removing headlight motors (possibly)
Making either fiberglass or carbon panels to replace the targa top (I can make fiberglass and carbon fiber stuff myself)
Inspect for areas that could maybe do with seam welding, to improve stiffness
Remove anything strictly unneccessary for track use (spare wheel, tool kit, stereo, speakers, heater/aircon controls and boxes and piping, any other crud like this)
Replacing windscreen with an 'apparently' lighter one supplied by a friend that owns a windscreen business (this one is cracked anyway, so why not?)

Anyone have any reasonable guesstimates (or accurate weights) of the weight savings involved in each of these steps?


Will also be trying to use whatever the lightest wheels I can find are, without spending a fortune. I've noticed in a few threads it's been mentioned that the stock wheels are actually lighter than the majority of aftermarket wheels, and I kind of like the idea of keeping narrow tyres on it, using the theory of the new Toyota 86 about NOT going for maximum grip, allowing the car to get a bit more rear-end happy without needing more power. To this theory, I may end up using some stock aluminium wheels from another car (S13 or something), whatever happens to weigh the least. I don't want to go spending $1200AU on a set of wheels, when the whole car isn't worth that!

I may eventually go down the route of improving power/brakes/handling by throwing some money at it, but as mentioned this car is mostly a test-bed for me to play around experimenting. I have a massive motorcycle workshop here and hopefully will be installing a hoist in the next couple of weeks.

Anyone have any more suggestions on reducing weight and/or improving fun factor? Really looking forward to any input from Z owners!

Flacster

Well with everything you listed removed and if you stripped the interior. You may be around 2600 pounds. The z32 wheels and brakes(aluminum) are lighter and are all over the place. I have stripped like maybe 50-60 pounds from my engine bay, dropped 11 pounds in the exhaust, put I've put in an intercooler w/piping but I have no idea how much my car weighs now. Maybe about the same.

rogerz

z32 wheels won't fit they are five lug you must have the 84 or 85 version only the turbos in those years camae with five lug wheels. unless you go strip parts from a junker