reducing weight to reduce 1/4 mile time

[VNCommo]

was just thinking about why commodores dont preform that well down the quater mile and was thinking how much weight to ya rekon it would require to be taken off in order for it to be in say the 12 sec braket. i no the vn is about 1300kg and buy felling the weight of the doors boot and bonnet i feel as if it can be reduced quite a bit. does the commodore engine have enough power to do a 12 sec run?

comments

[Bax]

Take off say.. 700kgs.. haha.

1300 isn't really 'that' much weight. With a bit more power and some basics removed you could probably get down into the 13's.. 12's are a bit more ellusive i think.

[VSSII]

Rule of thumb is 50 pounds of weight removed = 0.1 sec off E/T. I'd chuck the spare and that'd be it.

[bangers]

get rid of the spare wheel, and rear seat. get fibreglass bonnet, guards and boot lid. get rid of door windows and get perspex ones. light rims and a different diff ratio would definately see you close to it if you didn't get it.

[sircruisealotVS]

funny thing about reducing the weight of a car to run 12's...you strip the interior and take everthing un-neccessary out, but if you do 12's your required to have a roll cage, so its kinda pointless in the first place.

[TheIceman]

Originally Posted by VNCommo

how much weight to ya rekon it would require to be taken off in order for it to be in say the 12 sec braket.

one hell of a lot. but why bother?

i no the vn is about 1300kg and buy felling the weight of the doors boot and bonnet i feel as if it can be reduced quite a bit. does the commodore engine have enough power to do a 12 sec run?

it has enough power with the aid of a super charger to run into the 12's yeah.
me mate had a VN V6 with a sick capa super charger, fully worked auto transmission, fully balanced and beefed engine, with a vortech type charger on it with water injection, extractors and a twin exhaust with twin cats all the way through.

[Pretender]

Different car but shows what improvement you could expect if you follow the same procedure.
When 15 my friend and I were giving a 120Y by his grandmother.
He lived on a farm with a long dirt driveway. We marked out 400m and laid a blistering hand timed 21 secs.
We then got his Dad's tools out and removed: Bonnet, Doors, Bootlid, Windows, Seats (all of them), Contents of the boot, All Carpets and underlay, Lights, Bumpers, Front guards, Inner guards and then stood back and had a look. At this moment we thought we could do better so got the angle grinders out.
Cut off the roof and as much of everything else as we could.
In the end it had only the motor, gearbox, dash and suspensions mounts intact otherwise it was as flat as we could get it. Fuel filler was held up,to stop leaking, with a piece of fencing wire and we used a plastic school chair(also held in place with wire) for a driver's seat.
We then timed it again and got a best of 17 seconds flat.
So, if you do the same thing to a V6 Commodore, you should get into the 12second bracket given we obtained a 4 second decrease in times using only the stock motor. Given the extra torque you may get into the 11s.
Give it go and let us know how it went or just supercharge it.

[holden#1]

Originally Posted by Pretender

Different car but shows what improvement you could expect if you follow the same procedure.
When 15 my friend and I were giving a 120Y by his grandmother.
He lived on a farm with a long dirt driveway. We marked out 400m and laid a blistering hand timed 21 secs.
We then got his Dad's tools out and removed: Bonnet, Doors, Bootlid, Windows, Seats (all of them), Contents of the boot, All Carpets and underlay, Lights, Bumpers, Front guards, Inner guards and then stood back and had a look. At this moment we thought we could do better so got the angle grinders out.
Cut off the roof and as much of everything else as we could.
In the end it had only the motor, gearbox, dash and suspensions mounts intact otherwise it was as flat as we could get it. Fuel filler was held up,to stop leaking, with a piece of fencing wire and we used a plastic school chair(also held in place with wire) for a driver's seat.
We then timed it again and got a best of 17 seconds flat.
So, if you do the same thing to a V6 Commodore, you should get into the 12second bracket given we obtained a 4 second decrease in times using only the stock motor. Given the extra torque you may get into the 11s.
Give it go and let us know how it went or just supercharge it.

that paints a very humourous picture in my mind! 120Y with a plastic chair for driver down drag strip! you make a good point... not always practical to do this but it obviously makes a difference....

these are the weights I remove out of my Calais when the need arises:

get rid of spare save 20kg
make sure you only have 10litres of fuel in tank. potentially save 50kg
get rid of passenger. save 70kg

theres 140kg saved without going to any bother...

[gocommygo]

lol you forgot mother in laws usually weigh a little more then 70kg

[tougHnA]

hey boys wat about taken your aircon off i did on my vl :P there like 20kg or so.... noticed no difference thought but all adds up i guess......

[vlv8vic]

Originally Posted by tougHnA

hey boys wat about taken your aircon off i did on my vl :P there like 20kg or so.... noticed no difference thought but all adds up i guess......

would have thought from the little difference it would make that it would be nicer to have air conditioning!!!

Did you removed the ac yourself?

[ucwepn]

In the new mx5 mazda removed 90 grams or something like that from the rear view mirror. So I guess everybit does count. There is a thick layer of insulation under the carpet weighing between 5-10kg.skinny tyres weigh less than fatties so skinnies on the front will help as well. also if you can take the rear of your exhaust off theres another gain.

[Bax]

What is 20kgs in the airconditioning?

I must be getting big if I can lift 20kgs with two fingers. I'd say about 4kgs for the compressor.

I'd rather keep the luxuries then get 1/10th of a second.