Weight reduction: Running out of ideas.

[68/70Vette]

The frame weighs about 300 pounds. Knocking down this weight is good, but it's at the lowest center of gravity of all the other weights.

At this stage, after all your weight reducing activities, I'd guess there are no remaining cheap things to do.

Did you ever get rid of that gross cast iron piece that attaches the steering column to the lower windshield frame? It can be replaced by a stamped steel unit much lighter for the 82's. Replaced mine.

We'd wish that somewhere a Corvette enthusiast had made millions on Silicon Valley stock options and would fund your weight reduction activities. Titanium, carbon fiber, and $$$ will make the weight go down.

 

[69427]

The frame weighs about 300 pounds. Knocking down this weight is good, but it's at the lowest center of gravity of all the other weights. You are correct. I'm at the point where I have to just take the weight reduction wherever I can find it. But, regardless of position, the weight still has to be accelerated and decelerated. I do wish I could find some ways to take some weight off the top part of the car, but until I learn how to make a set of carbon fiber T-tops I'm just kinda stuck with the 'lesser efficient" places to pull out the weight.

At this stage, after all your weight reducing activities, I'd guess there are no remaining cheap things to do.

Did you ever get rid of that gross cast iron piece that attaches the steering column to the lower windshield frame? It can be replaced by a stamped steel unit much lighter for the 82's. Replaced mine. Yeah, got it out last year. I dreaded doing it, but I lucked out and it actually came out without causing me too much cussing or headache.




We'd wish that somewhere a Corvette enthusiast had made millions on Silicon Valley stock options and would fund your weight reduction activities. Titanium, carbon fiber, and $$$ will make the weight go down.

Yeah, the money factor always comes into play. Given a decent amount of funds (which I'm unlikely to have) I would have loved to have replaced half the bolts on the car with titanium bolts, titanium exhaust, doing a bunch of the bodywork in CF, and the frame in aluminum. A few years ago at the PRI show I saw a vendor selling a magnesium housing for the Nash/Richmond 5 spd transmission I just took out and replaced with the lighter original M-21.
Oh well, I can keep dreaming. :amused:

 

[Kid Vette]

You need to become best buds with this guy, Ultra-Carbon They have a lot more products than what's on the web site. Their Facebook shows a lot more of their products.

 

[69427]

You need to become best buds with this guy, Ultra-Carbon They have a lot more products than what's on the web site. Their Facebook shows a lot more of their products.

Hey, looks pretty interesting. I'll have to see what all they've got. I'm not on Facebook, but perhaps I can get the wife to take a detour there next time she's logged onto it. Thanks. :thumbs:

 

[69427]

Wiper motor weight?

Anybody know how much that thing weighs? I see quite a few smaller looking setups on newer cars in the junkyard and I always get curious if it's possible to put a later model unit on the car. Also, does anyone know if there's any Corvette specific issues/capabilities with the present motor that would prevent swapping in a newer part?

Thanks for any help or information.

 

[rtj]

I forget his screen name, but he has a hill climb/race car and I think it was around 2400lbs. Need him to chime in. And, that had a cage.

 

[69427]

Haven't had any luck finding out the weight of a C5 front cradle yet, but have been amusing myself with other stuff in the mean time. Did a test fit of the new trans crossmember with the exhaust plugged in.
The crossmember so far has made my weight target of ten pounds less than the stock 22#piece (11.4#). I've hung on it a couple times and it feels pretty sturdy. I'm trying to figure out a convenient way to attach a dial indicator to the tunnel area and measure the crossmember deflection when I hang some weight off the center of it.



.......

I got to thinking I might just try to duplicate the exhaust termination box in aluminum. The scrap yard I go to has a lot of different sizes of aluminum tubing to choose from. What they don't have is tubing elbows, so I might have to figure out how many different bends I'm going to have to (somehow) fabricate that will still flow decently. IIRC, the box and the 4" tubing outlet that feeds the Y pipe behind the rear spring weighs about 26#. I think I could probably get the aluminum replacement down to about 16 pounds.

 

[SuperBuickGuy]

you should be able to get at least a 10# savings if you rewire your car with can-bus cables

this
http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/general/hrdp_1001_multiplexing_wiring_kit/

bonus is your lights will tend to be brighter.

 

[69427]

Starting on aluminum front crossmember.

Got some material the other week to use on the crossmember, and during a few episodes of not having the answers to some other issues, I've taken a couple breaks to make some upfront progress on the crossmember. Got a few pieces cut, and a couple others marked off for later cutting. The basic crossmember should go pretty quick, as I'm copying a good portion of the present steel crossmember. Depending on how some of the steering geometry (steering rack position) data turns out, that will tell me if I have to make some shape changes to the crossmember. Right now the rack bolts to a bracket, which then bolts to the crossmember. I did it that way in case I made a major error in the rack's positioning (and then I can just make up a new positioning bracket to correct the error), or if I wanted to just make a small geometry change.
I still need to get a spool gun MIG welder to do this next project. As I mentioned earlier, I'm damn slow when it comes to TIG work (which then seems to cause me to use up shielding gas at a higher rate than I like, which costs me extra expense) so a MIG should speed up the process. I just need to look around the garage and see what parts and stuff I'm not using anymore that I can sell to help offset the cost of the new welder.

 

[69427]

Just amusing myself during the slow times. While I was getting the shifter linkage fabricated for the Muncie I noticed how damn heavy the shifter ball was. I had always assumed it was aluminum, but I hadn't bothered to think about it too much thirty years ago when I took the Muncie stuff out. The material is hard like steel but isn't magnetic. Given its weight I'm assuming it's either stainless steel or depleted uranium.
The shifter ball is 1 3/4" diameter, so I got some aluminum bar stock of the same diameter to carve out a replacement.



The shifter ball weighs 8 ounces. I cut a simple 1 3/4 inch length of bar to start the work on it, and it's already under 8 ounces.

The annoying part is the internal threads that connect it to the shifter. They appear to be 9/16" fine thread. I've got a darn good collection of taps from damn small on up to about an inch in diameter. I'm only missing one size, and you can probably guess which one that is. Oh well, this project will just force me to complete my tap collection.

 

[vette427sbc]

Anybody know how much that thing weighs? I see quite a few smaller looking setups on newer cars in the junkyard and I always get curious if it's possible to put a later model unit on the car. Also, does anyone know if there's any Corvette specific issues/capabilities with the present motor that would prevent swapping in a newer part?

Thanks for any help or information.

The motor has to have a park function to move back under the wiper door. I just had a buick century in yesterday that had the park function. It was an '01 I think

Someone needs to make a fiberglass wiper door for the early cars...

 

[69427]

Haven't had any luck finding out the weight of a C5 front cradle yet, but have been amusing myself with other stuff in the mean time. Did a test fit of the new trans crossmember with the exhaust plugged in.
The crossmember so far has made my weight target of ten pounds less than the stock 22#piece (11.4#). I've hung on it a couple times and it feels pretty sturdy. I'm trying to figure out a convenient way to attach a dial indicator to the tunnel area and measure the crossmember deflection when I hang some weight off the center of it.



.......

I got to thinking I might just try to duplicate the exhaust termination box in aluminum. The scrap yard I go to has a lot of different sizes of aluminum tubing to choose from. What they don't have is tubing elbows, so I might have to figure out how many different bends I'm going to have to (somehow) fabricate that will still flow decently. IIRC, the box and the 4" tubing outlet that feeds the Y pipe behind the rear spring weighs about 26#. I think I could probably get the aluminum replacement down to about 16 pounds.

Managed to round up some material for the termination box. I got a couple 8 foot sections of 3" and 4" thin wall aluminum tubing, along with some assorted sizes of aluminum sheet. No aluminum elbows yet, so I might have to just try cutting a few pie shaped sections out of the 4" stuff to make a couple slight curves to make the S pipe just prior to the camber bracket.
Ended up buying an Eastwood MIG welder with their spool gun so I can make a little quicker progress on the aluminum welding where I can. The Eastwood welder will never be mistaken for a Lincoln or Miller piece, but it looks like it will do the job for small time operations like mine.

 

[phantomjock]

Is it the Eastwood 175? have one - will be interested in following your spool gun use - haven't tried that feature yet.

 

[69427]

Is it the Eastwood 175? have one - will be interested in following your spool gun use - haven't tried that feature yet.

Planning to give the spool gun a try this weekend, assuming all the outside silliness leaves me alone for a bit (yep, the 175).

 

[69427]

Played around a bit this afternoon, initially just messing with quarter and eighth inch scrap stuff. All in all I'm pretty happy with the welder. Just for kicks I tried a simple project I'd been mulling over for a while (all quarter inch stuff).



The OEM part is 2.3#, and this piece is 1.4#. I still need to put the rest of the welds in (adding weight), but I also need to cut off some excess length up front, drill out the front mount bolt hole, and grind out a little more clearance below the pinion yoke. Hopefully I can still reduce the component weight by 3/4 of a pound with this. The weight removed is low and rearward obviously, but I'll still take the reduction wherever I can find it.

Once I get this finished I'll see what level of the thinner stuff I can weld with this without burning through.

As I mentioned before, this welder won't be mistaken for a Miller or Lincoln (lots of plastic stuff on this one), but it's also half the price of the ones I had been looking at.

 

[69427]

Got the pinion bracket welded up and installed in the car. Three quarters of a pound less than the steel part. Not much, but some good practice with the welder. All in all I'm damn happy with the welder. Once I got the settings the way I liked it even a yahoo like me could lay down some decent looking beads. Next step is to try some 1/16" scrap stuff before I try doing the exhaust box in aluminum.

 

[69427]

Started to do some work on the exhaust box. First step was to get a couple pieces of the 3" OD inlet tubing expanded to 3" ID. Looked all over this area, and of the two muffler places I found one was closed (on a Friday) and the other doesn't deal in "tubing that big". So, rather than waste more time looking for yet another muffler shop I just cut some slots in the aluminum tubing and hammered it over some 3" steel tubing, and then welded the pie slots closed with my spool gun. After some practice and tweaking of the power and wire speed controls I got the tubing slices welded up. I'm using .035" wire (that was supplied with the machine) on the tubing which is about .070" wall thickness. I think I'm going to try some .030" wire on this project just to see if that gives me a bit more margin against burning through the tubing and the sheet stuff.

 

[69427]

Making some progress on the exhaust box replacement. The steel piece is in a picture a couple posts earlier. Here's the present aluminum piece during a test fit.



Due to time constraints (trying to get ready for an upcoming track day) I'm just replacing the piece prior to the S bend ahead of the rear spring. I don't have any 4" aluminum tubing elbows (so I'll have to make some replacements later) so I just have a temporary weight delta on this. The steel piece (without the elbows) weighs 15 pounds. The aluminum piece here weighs 5 pounds. I still need to cut out some excess material, but also add some stiffening material to keep the top and bottom surfaces from vibrating too much, so hopefully the total weight reduction will be 8-10 pounds. The 4" S pipe aluminum replacement later on should yield another two pounds perhaps.

 

[69427]

Shifter knob

Was cutting on the chunk of aluminum, originally going to make a ball shape to replace the stock (heavy stainless steel) piece when I got to thinking that a lot of newer cars have a more cylindrical shifter knob on them, so I thought I'd give that a try. If I don't like it I can then just grind the excess off and make it a ball shape.



The stock shifter ball is 8 ounces, while this is 5 ounces.

 

[mrvette]

Was cutting on the chunk of aluminum, originally going to make a ball shape to replace the stock (heavy stainless steel) piece when I got to thinking that a lot of newer cars have a more cylindrical shifter knob on them, so I thought I'd give that a try. If I don't like it I can then just grind the excess off and make it a ball shape.



The stock shifter ball is 8 ounces, while this is 5 ounces.

Weigh an 8 ball, that's what I have.....on a hurst shifter rod......I drive in the James Dean slouch position left hand at top of wheel, leaning over on the console pad, complete with my cool shifter knob.....:lol::lol::thumbs: