Extent Or Your Cars Weight Reduction

How much is enough, too much or your happy medium? If your a racer how far do you go? If you run on the street also what’s your limit of gutting? What do you have to have? What did you start at for weight and where are you now with your car? Before and after strip results? I’m in the early stages of reducing the weight on my van as one of the last things I can do before my plans this coming winter to pull the engine/trans and do power upgrades. Being I use my van on the street occasionally, but setting it up to be much more drag oriented, I’m still hesitant to start gutting street friendly parts like mirrors, visors, wipers, etc. There’s the easy big targets and then the little things that add up. My first stage or goal of weight reduction was a target of 100 lbs which I hit easily by changing to a lithium battery (-35lbs) removing both buckets seats for a Jaz alum race seat (-42lbs) mini starter (-7 lbs) removal of entire heater assembly and dash crash pad (-30 lbs) Plan on replacing some steel interior door panels, possibly the steel doghouse, and belly pan on underside (for airflow to radiator) with aluminum, ditch the sway bar, fab some aluminum bumper brackets and hopefully source fiberglass bumpers that fit nice for the next stage. Hopefully lose another 100 lbs with those things then there’s maybe swapping to Billet Specialties Street Lite black rims which will save me 50 lbs over the Keystones I have now. Before all this my van weighed 3370 lbs, now down to 3270 lbs, headed to 3170+/-, and if I swap rims and some race only front tires I’d be around 3100 lb. That’s about my limit and still be usable on the street with factory glass, mirrors, wipers, etc just be able to swap in the buckets for cruising. Would be interesting to read what others have done or are doing and the results :)


No heater? Dang. Probably not a big deal if you don’t drive it year round.

Looks like you’re getting it done. It’s pretty hard getting things below 3000 pounds and still have something streetable. I forget how many windows your van has, but you can replace the glass with lexan and save some weight. Maybe do all the glass except the windshield. You can do it too if you want, but a little road grime and some rain and it will get scratches in it, and you need to get a buffer and buff it out. It’s a PITA. On my race car I had to buff the windshield at least once a year.


What are the power upgrades? Maybe you can’t start another thread so this one doesn’t get too far into the weeds.

That’s all I got.