Car tuning tips and mods.

Losing some weight from your  car will help all aspects of performance. As there is less weight to pull around the acceleration will be quicker. Braking will also be better and general handling will improve. So what can you do to reduce the weight of your car?

Wheels: fitting alloy wheels will help to reduce the weight. As the wheels are unsprung and will hit every road bump and dip you will get much sharper handling. Lighter wheels are not always as strong so there is a bit of a compromise to be made here.

Bodywork can be lightened. The heaviest panel in any car is generally the bonnet and boot. Replacing this with a carbon fibre (looks cool) or fibreglass (will look plasticy) will dramatically reduce the weight. The bonnet may well flex at high speed so be sure to fit proper fasteners at each edge. To save money buy a scratched or imperfect carbon fibre bonnet and then paint it – it will look standard and you will have the benefit of a lighter car.

The front wings can also be easily replaced with most wings bolting on. Again a carbon fibre or fibreglass option will cut this weight down. Don’t worry too much about losing protection – the box section of chassis and the suspension mounts will still be quite protective.

Internally you can remove just about everything. Pull out the sound deadening the carpets, the dashboard the radio and even the seats. Replace the drivers seat with a lightweight drivers seat with fixed height.

In the engine you should use stainless steel exhaust headers which are not only lighter than cast iron ones they will give you a performance benefit. Air conditioning and even power steering pumps can be quite heavy so remove these and change the gearing of the steering if it is too heavy.

Glass is another weight causing item. Removing the glass from your vehicle and replacing the windows with perspex will shave off  a few more pounds.

When  you start getting down to the nuts and bolts you really need to be fussy about the additional weight of performance parts and go with the lighter option.

Finally throw out all the junk that accumulates in the car. The spare wheel is also pretty heavy so switch to run flats, or carry a tyre repair spray can or similar. Also a full tank of fuel can weigh a fair bit so I know many drivers that deliberately run round on a half full tank (the pessimists tanks are half empty of course!)

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