Weight Reduction Europa S2

[JamesD]

What battery are you running? I'm trying to drop 50 kg's on my race car and if i can find a Lithium Iron battery then i should save 8 kg's right there and then! go Lithium Iron! they like 4 or 5 times the price of lead acid but in weight reduction it is worth it....

[Mecky]

We use a standard Pb-battery. The battery and the water-cooler are the only things, which bring a little bit weight an the front tyres...

We have to find the weight at the back from now on. The front is already to light for braking well in rain... The wheels stand very easy

[timcking]

FYI ... I recently built a 1971 Europa S2 street car that weighed 1175 lbs. Basically, how I got mine down to under 1200 lbs is by removing weight and/or lightening everything I could. I know this sounds obvious, but it's really how to get there. This was the second S2 I've built, my first was an SCCA race car with a full roll cage. It weighed about 100 lbs more.

With the recent car, I removed unnecessary fiberglass from the body. I replaced almost all of the steel components (other than the frame) with aluminum. I removed the door windows and motors and replaced them with polycarbonate sheet.

I replaced the OEM alternator with a compact one-wire racing unit. I replaced the fuel tank with an aluminum unit available from Banks. I replaced the OEM dash with a fabricated superlight fiberglass one that looks similar, but weighs substantially less. Also the OEM seats weigh 25 lbs and I replaced them with ones weighing about 12 lbs each.

You literally have to go through every component of the car and ask the question: can I make this lighter.

[timcking]

As a reference I weighed my 1969 Europa S2 when it was new and it weighed 1,250 lbs. When I put a roll cage in it and remove all the extraneous stuff, for racing it ended up being about the same, or 1,400 lbs with me in it. A 1971 S2 I just finished, I was able to get down to 1,175 lbs for the street. On the latter, did everything mentioned (except aluminum fasteners) along with polycarbonate side and rear windows. I used plastic replacement headlights and 3" dia. truck parking and tail lights. I replaced the OEM alternator with a small one-wire unit. Basically, everything was optimized for weight reduction. The replacement seats weighed 12-15 lbs each (the originals weight 25). This car had the 807 cross-flow engine with a 5-speed. I also fabricated a replacement dash out of fiberglass (a substantial weight reduction).

[sprocket3]

Originally Posted by BDA

That's a new one on me, EF! I've never heard of that. Don't think I'd try it either.
Just did a search and it's not as uncommon as I thought. IF you were to use them, I would get the ones with the steel inserts.

Doesn't Porsche use these as OE. Seems like I had an 20 year old Porsche with non-steel lug bolts. I can't recall which one it was though. I had a few of them.

[philethier]

Originally Posted by timcking

I weighed my 1969 Europa S2 when it was new and it weighed 1,250 lbs.

I find that extremely difficult to believe. A stock, street-trim S2 with glass windows? Sounds about 200 pounds light to me.

As I recall, the S1 was 1310.