....

 

Go on a diet. ~10lbs

 

It seems kind of strange to me how people scoff at anyone that wants to reduce weight in their G's. I guess it's because the kind of crowd a G35 attracts in its buyer market isn't exactly the normal import enthusiast, who is hell bent on getting every ounce of performance that their vehicle has to offer. Weight is everything, I remember first buying my G and getting in and being disapointed with the performance. It moved like a giant moon with its own orbit. It was a huge hunkering mass with its half ton flywheel of doom(I had a 9lb flywheel on my last car). On paper, everything looks great. It has an amazingly stiff chassis, very very good stock suspension, good brakes, powertrain, and a very long wheelbase but you simply cannot emulate the kind of feeling you get from a lightweight car. In the last year and a half, I've gotten more used to driving a larger GT car and have since learned the proper inputs to get it to respond in a unsurprising way but I still prefer the amazing road feel of a true lightweight. I had a first generation JDM WRX(1995), it was a full drivetrain swap because the car was not available in america. My stripped car(still had front seats/backseat/dash) weighted in at just over 2600lb's, it was AWD, and it made about 285hp or so with the stock ECU and just a full exhaust. The car legitimately could run in the 12 second range simply due to its power to weight ratio. It didn't make a lot of power by conventional standards, but that is what made it such an amazing car. The main complain about AWD cars, is that they lack driver feel and the steering rack can be somewhat vague, not to mention they're almost always nose heavy and understeer at the limit. Driving an AWD car that light(I also had a 2.7 lock to lock STi Quick Steering Rack) brings back a lot of the road feel, sharpness, and turn in of a RWD car with all the amazing lines and exit speed you can take with an AWD car.

That being said, slightly off topic, but I believe reducing the G in weight by 150-200 pounds would be extremely substantial to the car's overall feel. Removing the weight will have to be balanced though, and simply gutting the rear of the car will upset this fine balance. Most people will say to just buy a 350z, which is approximately 200 pounds lighter (less for several trims), but a 350z and a G35 handle differently, just as an STi and an EVO handle differently. They are very similar but the 8 inch difference in wheelbase is definitely apparent when cornering. The G also has a 52/48%, versus the 350z's 53/47%, so in that respect it is also 1% more balanced. 2% of the Car's total weight (3500 approx.) would be around 70 pounds. I think at this point, most of us can accept the fact that Nissan's PR blurb about how a car should not be 50/50 balanced is simply marketing hype at work. Anyone who has ever driven a Miata, or an RX7 will know that driving a perfectly balanced car is a beautiful thing. It is for these reasons that I believe if you weight reduce the G, while simultaneously improving the chassis balance, it will be an extremely rewarding experience.

This is what I was thinking of off the top of my head to lighten the front end:
Relocate battery to trunk (-36lb out of the nose)
Drain Wiper Fluid (-8lb)
Remove battery cover, shroud, and engine cover (3-5lb)
Lightweight Pulleys? (3-5lb)
Lightweight Rotors (????)

Since you are relocating the battery to the trunk of the car, you can remove your spare tire (36lb), which is fortunately, the exact same weight as the OEM battery, and will not upset the weight balance of the cat at all. Stripping the trunk, spare, and tools is good for 50lb but the rear of the car is already light enough and we don't want to have more traction problems with the rear end. If this is all done, it will remove 50-55lb from the nose which would make the car's overall weight distrubtion about 49.5/50.5%

I'm heading to Horse Thief Mile on the 21st and this is what I plan to do
15.5 Lightweight Deka Battery (-21lb)
HKS Replica Exhaust (-22lb)
Remove Rear Seat(-36lb)
Wiper Fluid(-8lb)
Engine Cover/Battery Cover/Shroud(-5lb)
Trunk Mat/Cargo Net (-7lb)

This should put me at about 100 pounds of weight reduction. I'm going to run one session with the spare out, and one session with the spare in and see how it affects the handling characteristics, but with the spare out and all the associated styrofoam pieces, i'm looking at around 140lb of total weight reduction. Considering the fact that I weigh only 135lb, I have successfully made the car lighter than it's OEM weight of 3524(06 manual) WITH the driver in the car. Weight reduction is not at all insignificant, and a better use of money than many of the NA mods that are floating around out there. The way I see it, the lighter I can make the car at the track, the more money I'm saving on brakes/tires and general wear and tear.

 

No one is scoffing at him for weight reductions. We are saying there are better cars to do it to then a luxury sport coupe for cheaper. You missed the part where he said he wanted to keep the luxury and dd since you said about seats,battery, and spare tire which entitles me to think you didnt even read through his initial post.

 

If you read his initial post, you'll see he has already done the lightweight battery and replacing the spare with a can of Fix a Flat is pretty common practice by many of the boards who are still DD'ing their car. I think if he is already going so far as to ask how much weight he is going to save by removing the heat shields of his exhaust, a lot of this information would be worth considering for him before that. My post was a theoretical post, not relating directly to the OP, but weight reduction in the G in general. I was also sharing my personal experience for what I am going to do when I goto the TRACK, not street driving. I'm sorry if it wasn't directly helpful to the topic starter, it is just something I have been thinking about for the last few weeks and I wanted to share my thoughts with the G community.

 

Cool. My apologies dont get me wrong you do have good info in there. I already cut alot of weight with taking off most of what you mentioned.

 

It sucks but I know what you mean, there is a very different mindset over on my350z about this sort of thing and honestly the two cars are essentially the exact same platform just +2 back seats so why should there be a different approach especially if we all call ourselves enthusiasts.

And ive actually played around with stripping the trunk, and pulling the back seats and essentially gutting the interior. I ran it like that for about a month and honestly yea it made a noticeable difference in the acceleration, but there was something wrong with the way the car handled with all the weight removed from the back. And mind you that was only about 100 to 150lbs removed and the effect on handling was huge (and not positive) so needless to say the back seats and crap in the trunk all went back in shortly after and I started looking into pulling weight out of the front. In essence your totally right about doing this with a focus on weight distribution.

 

Don't forget to keep your gas tank low. Gas weighs almost 6.5 pounds per gallon, and we have 20.5 gallon tanks.

If you try to keep around 3-5 gallons of gas in the car whenever you plan on doing some racing, this should help you free up about 100-110 pounds compared to driving with a full tank.

You should get some lightweight rims too if you can... that's rotational mass, which accounts for a lot more performance gains than just body weight deductions.

 

Very different mindset here. I've gotten crap for being a supporter of performance mods in general. I'm the type that will favor a car and owner who can bridge the gap between performance and style. It takes a lot more effort and research to do that.

No offense to anyone here, but the performance mindset here is almost none. A nicely done, street driven track car (example: RareJDM G35 Coupe) car will get over looked by a car with no performance, flush wheels with slanted window stickers AKA "flare". Remember the movie "office space" LOL!

I usually head over to my350z for technical and performance related topics.

G35 driver is great for learning about basic bolt-ons, body kits, wheel fitment, and slamming your ride.

In our local forum, most members would rather drive 200 miles to stand around in a parking lot and look at other cars than attend (race OR watch) a performance related event such as drag, auto-x, road race events, cruises, dyno days and canyon runs.

To the OP, I'm all for it reducing weight. If your not using it and your into performance, do it. All the panels and accessories can easily be put back if needed.

P.S. I'm not a "hater" of the show scene, but just sad to see the performance aspect of modifying in general taking a slow death in general. I remember back when I started modifying in the mid 90's. It was all about performance back then. Now it's all about taking a large rim and getting extra points per degree of neg camber. Make a car look fast with no requirement to back it up anymore. I'd hate to see the import scene slowly transition to another "low-rider" scene with all show, no go.

 

Remove back seats

 

Good luck to the OP on the weight reduction process. Thanks for starting this thread... I got some good ideas out of the posts.

 

I think your most noticeable weight savings will be in the wheels... Rotating mass... Get Lightweight wheels, AND tires... Its a huge difference on motorcycles, and I sure it would have to be on cars as well.

I have heard some say a light weight fly wheel can be bad. I had a friend that put one on his Accord years ago. Engine ended up blowing up, spun some bearings. The Master Tech at the honda garage said ti was due to the flywheel. The car was NOT under warranty anyhow so the guy would have no reason to make that up.

This is just what i have heard, I do not know this for sure, but wanted to throw it out there to see if anyone else has heard this...

 

I would say its plausible. If U/D Pulleys can throw off rotational mass in the front i would apply the same concept to the flywheel.

 

idk, its really hard to believe. Our engines are internally balanced, the crank pullies we purchase are also balanced, as are the clutch and flywheel assemblies. I would be inclined to say that there were other things going on with the accord, for now ill keep rocking my act prolite, it just makes driving the car sooo much more fun.

Anyways back on topic, ill try and get my coolant pipes welded up this week and get going with removing the stock oil pre-heater/cooler (seriously idk which one, its either a really ****ty designed oil cooler or a very inefficient oil preheater). Ill report back with the weight saved.

 

If I am remembering right... they said it was the inertia of rotation... Flogging the throttle the heavier flywheel would allow the engine to spin down slower and safer... lighter fly wheel is spun up FAST and as soon as you let out the RPM dropped FAST... To fast for the safe operation of the engine...