help me build my first race car

Get out a plasma cutter, sazall, drill, hack saw, whatever you have and start removing steel. If you can't afford fiberglass, there is a Tom of weight in the factory bumpers. Remove them and lookat the backside. You will see a steel brace. Unbolt it, and trash it. Build a new mount to re attach the bumper and it will shed a bunch of weight. Remove door panels and cut down the structure, keep what's needed to make the windows work but remove everything else. Remove the dash and remove the heater box, cut out all the structure offend back side ofthe dash. Remove the interior 1/4 panel deal and remove stele under it (the door panel for the back seat for a lack of a better term) The rear bumper can be gutted just like the front. Remove the carpet, headliner and all trim panels, replace factory seat with after market remove back seat install firewall blocking PDF the trunk, (needed when you relocate the battery anyway) make it out of aluminum, remove inner fenders up front and replace them with thin aluminum. Once your done with that, take whole saw to any remaining steel that could loose a little more meat without loosing too much strength. All of this can be done for about $45 for aluminum, $10 for some steel to make bumper mounts, $250-300 for a new drivers seat. And about 3weekends of time. And you will already have a faster car. Removing weight is cheaper than adding hp. Once you have all the weight out you should be down around 2800-2600 pounds, if not way less. The weight loss will compensate for the added weight ofthe big block, and cage. And you should end up about where you are now weight
Wise instead of 300-400 poindsheavyer. That's good for roughly .3 to .4 drop in ET