944 S2 - track use

[Globe_911]

well just had a quick go at it now and lost a total of 55.9 kg easily (which includes taking out both existing seats and replacing with Cobra Monacos). Rear seats came out (only top half at the moment) spare wheel and jack and the rear seat belts and fasteners. so it's gettin there. Just waiting to hear about a roll cage best price so far iw £650 + vat + fitting so not great.

rear plastic screen is a possibility just have to price it up + the cost of fitting it. seats, harnesses and cage will be coming first though.

cheers everyone []

 

[Peter Empson]

Hi Thomas, what a great result!
There's not much weight in the lower rear seat and it exposes messy glue which is a pain to remove. However as I'm sure you've noticed the rear carpet is heavy, so whip that out if you haven't already. I want to recommend going for a lighter battery but cannot as I'm still waiting for the parts to try mine, however for £130 ish you can save quite a bit there (and loose the need to vent gas and prevent the risk of any acid leaking).

My rear screen ended up costing quite a bit [] The plastic was less than a couple of hundred, the fitting a little more. The main costs were that I discovered due to the poor manufacture of the screen (it was distorted) that I couldn't refit the rubber spoiler so I needed to use a 3 piece spoiler, and by the time that was fitted and painted a cheap weight saving idea had cost well over £1K (I think the end figure was something closer to £1.5K) [] With what I know now I could do it much more cheaply, but hey, the experience is part of the fun []
The sun roof motor is circa 3kg and removing it was terribly satisfying, some manual clips (normally available cheaply on eBay from the States) secure it safely.
Best regards,
Peter

 

[sawood12]

Removal of the rear hatch must have a double whammy effect in that over an above the absolute weight saving it is the fact you are removing that weight from so high up - you havn't got that weight on top of the car acting like a pendulum. What about side windows? Not a great weight saving but it is low hanging fruit.

Peter, how are you getting on with your CF bonnet and wings?

 

[Peter Empson]

Hi Scott,
I agree, I think the distance from the cars centre, both vertically and horizontaly is what makes it such a great saving, I'll be concentrating on the front and rear ends when it's resprayed to see what more can be saved there (lights, bumpers etc), plus replacing the sunroof panel with a composite part.The rear windows are a cheap and easy small saving, I've not done them yet but they haven't been forgotten. After 5 years plus I may replace the rear screen so would buy them all at the same time.

The bonnet is fine, when it's professionally fitted and painted I think it'll be near indistinguishable from the original panel. I will be using bonnet pins as it does lift at the edges at speed slighty (this may be a fitment issue, but I would prefer a belt and braces approach anyway). I've bought Aerolatches for this and will fit them as soon as the pop up headlights have gone (the only other location for them as they're quite big would have blocked a possible intercooler pipe location).

The wings haven't been fitted yet, and I have regretted going for GF rather than CF so may change them before they're fitted.
I think I've finally decided not to re shell my car now, I'll try and have the rust patched as well as possible, which means I can start to think about organising the bodywork again.
Best regards,
Peter

 

[Tam Lin]

ORIGINAL: Peter Empson

The main costs were that I discovered due to the poor manufacture of the screen (it was distorted)

The sun roof motor is circa 3kg and removing it was terribly satisfying, some manual clips (normally available cheaply on eBay from the States) secure it safely.
Best regards,
Peter

Hi all, I really recommend anyone contemplating having a rear screen replacement looking at the plastics4performance.co.uk site. Quality (and choice) is very good, IMHO

I'm thinking of replacing the sunroof with a CF panel, the car drives better with no roof in, an the original sunroof, even if pinned, is still too heavy for my liking.

Where did you get CF wings from?

 

[Peter Empson]

Plastics4performance was where I was thinking of getting the rear windows from, but the rear screen would be from Simon at Essential, I believe the one he has was made from a cast of my original screen.

I've so rarely driven with the roof out, I suppose I ought to give it a go! It is a heavy panel, Porsche really did over engineer things. CF there is my plan too, I rather like the idea of exposed weave on the inside too []

The wings I have are GF, I'm not sure about who makes good CF ones but I'd ask Simon to get them for me as he has lots of contacts for bodywork. The reason I went for GF was that I view them as potential consumables, but everytime I pick them up they do seem quite heavy []

 

[zcacogp]

Chaps,

This is a fascinating thread. Given that the S2 is 1300kg stock (I believe, although could be wrong), what sort of figure is reasonable to expect with these sorts of reductions? Is sub-1000kg realistic, or over-optomistic?

ORIGINAL: Peter Empson

... the distance from the cars centre, both vertically and horizontaly is what makes it such a great saving, I'll be concentrating on the front and rear ends when it's resprayed to see what more can be saved there (lights, bumpers etc) ...

Interesting. US-spec Mk1 Golfs all had heavy impact-resistant bumpers fitted, and the easiest handling modification for them is to fit 'Euro-Spec' bumpers, which are a bit lighter. You save around 10kg each end, but this feels like a lot more as it is at the extreme ends of the car, and improves the handling significantly.

Havind said this, let's not forget what makes 944's so stable; the engine at one end and the gearbox the other. High polar moment of inertia=stability at speed.


Oli.

 

[Diver944]

The kerbweight from Porsche is 1340kg for an S2 and the racecars in the current club championship are built to be no lower than 1190kg though I believe the Turbos in the 1999 Porsche Open were down to the 1100kg figure including driver. It's going to be pretty hard to get a road car down to the 1000kg mark and I think the Le Mans racers were 950kg at their lowest

 

[sawood12]

How much could be saved by removing the pop up headlights and associated mecanism and replacing with the fixed units? Or maybe not replaced at all for a dedicated track car?

Regarding the sunroof, rather than going for the expense of a CF panel hows about simply welding in a steel panel. This will be pretty light and will become an intrgral part of the cars structure?

Peter, the shell that Promax are using for their project car is a 924 shell which are lighter I believe. They have fitted the 924 Carrera GT squared rear arches and will fit 944 front wings. I was there this weekend having my KW checked and it looks very nice.

 

[Peter Empson]

Hi Scott,
I don't know how much saving there will be with the headlights, but I guess 5kg is possible. If I lighten the bumper supports and fit a one piece bumper I think in total there's a fair bit to be saved.

Regarding the sunroof it's been suggested to me that getting the right curve on a steel panel would be difficult, there is also the increased potential of rust. I don't know how much difference a welded panel would make, apparently the roof structure is quite well braced on sun roof equipped cars, so the gain might be minimal. On one of the 968 forums someone has fitted a CF panel and filled/smoothed it and it looks great, but I'm not sure it'd last long with the state of the roads around here. Another option is to get the roof skin from a non sunroof car, but this is a bit extreme (and not to say difficult to find and poses problems if used with a later windscreen).

I was considering a 924 shell if I did need to start again, but the costs were getting a bit sobering if I did it properly in the short term. However I may still try to acquire one as I fancy building a second car for track only, doing it myself in my spare time over a few years.
Best regards,
Peter

 

[Globe_911]

yea I was quite pleased it lost a fairly significant amount of weight that easily but I suppose thats the easy part done!

how do I remove the sunroof motor? and do the clips just attach to the sunroof and roof of the car then just hinge up and lock?

seats were just short of 25kg each! so thats a pretty big saving. replacing side windows with plastic ones should be easy enough and I'll take the rear carpet out as it's pointless having it in really and as peter says it's pretty heavy. Ive had a quick browse on the plastics4performance website and it looks pretty good stuff.

when we bought the car the bloke said that with the sunroof completely out it 'boomed' quite a lot?

making for some interesting reading this thread [] thanks to all contributors!

 

[Peter Empson]

It's a while since I took out the sunroof motor, but it's located in the B pillar area, on the same side of the battery. Pull back the upper carpet and you'll see it. It just unbolts, you will need to peel back some of the headlining to get to the other end of the cable and latches.

The manual clips are exactly as you describe, they only allow an opening of about 2-3 inches and should really have a safety strap in place to stop it opening further, but as I don't ever have mine open whilst moving I didn't bother. The clips ideally benefit from a slight modification to the lining of the sunroof (I just removed mine), there are lots of threads on Rennlist about them (I'm sure I can dig one up if you cant find it). Whilst in the region of the headlining you might want to consider removing the rubber sound deadening behind it, Simon tipped me off about these, just watch the headlining as it's horrible stuff to work with if you want to put it back.

If you ever remove the sunroof it will get boomy unless you angle the front 'wing' section just right.

I can't remember if all S2's have a keyhole for the rear hatch, but if yours does then the release motor is another good candidate for removal [] (not much weight there, but it all counts)

 

[AndrewS]

...I believe the Turbos in the 1999 Porsche Open were down to the 1100kg figure including driver.

Hi Paul,

The 1999, 2000 (early season) 944 Turbo Porsche Cup cars were 1250kg with driver and later had to carry more ballast to be 1270kg with driver. My own car in 2000 weighed 1130kg without driver or ballast (one shown in my current avatar). That was with full glass (stipulated by the regulations at the time) and full cage.

Regards,
Andrew

 

[Tam Lin]

Hi Scott
The front light raising mechanism deletion saves about 8 Kg. An empty washer bottle helps, too.

Do you find you can a few low-speed clunks from the KW v3, or is it just me? The a-arms are fine, the arb is fine, the top-mounts are fine, and yet bad (all) road surfaces produce clunks at low speed on my 924s. V.Annoying

 

[lali]

ORIGINAL: Peter Empson
I can't remember if all S2's have a keyhole for the rear hatch, but if yours does then the release motor is another good candidate for removal [] (not much weight there, but it all counts)

The key operates the motor... if you want to get rid of it then you need to install a pull cord like they fitted to the 968CS.

 

[Hilux]

It is reckoned that 50kg weight loss equates to about 10 bhp gain.

 

[Peter Empson]

ORIGINAL: lali

The key operates the motor... if you want to get rid of it then you need to install a pull cord like they fitted to the 968CS.

Ahh thanks, the cut off point must have been before the S2's then, on mine the motor was a competely seperate assembly so it works fine without it.

 

[SimonP]

Peter
I sent you a PM via your avatar link, did it reach you OK?
Sorry to interrupt this interesting thread!
Regards

 

[Globe_911]

I'll have a quick look for the sunroof motor and see if it's worht taking it out [] got a few pics of the progress so far...

 

[Globe_911]

lovely 3.0 engine []