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Author Topic: Another weight saving thread!  (Read 724 times)

Offline Clarkj93

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Another weight saving thread!
« on: March 20, 2024, 11:26:48 pm »
So there is a great post here of many many ways to save weight: https://www.mk5golfgti.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=25580.0

However its pretty old now and I've documented almost everything I've done to lighten mine over the last year or so, so this seems a good place to share that.  Things that are marked with a ~ symbol are estimates and things I forgot to weigh bare in mind.

INTERIOR:
After market steering wheel -1.5kg
Radio ~1kg
Boot hard plastic trim ~1kg
Remove front door cards and replace with custom foam/abs material -8.2kg
Arm rest -4.4kg
Centre console -1.9kg
Sunroof delete -11kg
Front seat belts (each) -1.3kg
Carpet and its attached sound proofing -8.4kg
Ad-hoc interior bits (full stripped interior setup) -16.8kg
Visors, Headlining -4.4 (5 with handles)
Carpet air con ducts -1.1kg
Glued down sound deadening - 5kg
Rear door cards -5.8kg
Rear speakers and soundproofing -2kg
Curtain air bags -4kg
Rear seat belts -2.2kg
Parcel shelf and bracket ~1kg
Boot removeable carpet piece -1.3kg
Boot side trim -1.3kg
Trimmed dash -1.5kg
Swap heated leather seat to fibreglass bucket seat with steel brackets ~5kg
remove all seats - 76kg

OTHER:
Air con delete -9.4kg
Full heater core delete -8.5kg
Rear wiper removal ~1kg
Bonnet sound proofing and fog lights ~1kg
Spare wheel and tool kit ~18kg
Removing all dust shield ~0.5kg
TT wishbones conversion -2kg
Remove a single horn (still has 1 and is still loud enough for MOT, sounds like an old MG's horn is all!) -0.5kg
Alarm siren -0.5kg
Trim rear bumper -1.2kg
Various excess bolts and brackets (the wings use additional brackets that are not really needed, some interior items have big girthy bolts that can be removed when deleting like seat belts, seats, and generally additional fasteners for non integral items that you can remove like on the dash and bumpers) -2.5kg
switching to a 063 battery (fiesta/corsa sized) -8kg
switching to a full race battery -12kg
Gutting doors (crash bars/regulators/switch to polycarbonate) ~30kg
Trimming chassis brackets and wiring ~5+kg

WAYS TO GO EVEN FURTHER:
Switch to a carbon bucket
Composite bonnet/boot/doors and even roof
Polycarbonate windows
Alloy hubs
Lighter wheels
Coilovers (ones that use linear spring setups tend to be lighter by quite some margin, 4+kg over other coilover but both are still much lighten than oem)
Lighter engine components/engine supporting components
Replace crash bars with custom t45 tubing

So going full race setup with a  full roll cage its very easy to get these down to about 1250kg and you could go mad and get that quite a bit lower too it seems.

If you wanted to go full track/weekend toy setup (ac removed, radio removed, poly carb windows, expensive bucket seats, custom crash bars) but with sound proofing still in tact and general basic luxuries you could quite easily strip out 150kg, take into you would need harnesses and a cage which probably adds about 35kg but still 115kg is a fantastic weight saving.

If you wanted to keep it oem+ style but with a composite bonnet you could easily still strip out 54kg.