Based on my limited experience, I'd say it's hard to get into real weight loss without spending a lot of time and money on it. Generally, the answer is to buy aftermarket parts. Stuff like my 10" drum spindle Wilwood brakes shaved over 60 lbs off my front end. I'm not making my own lightweight disc brakes at home though so it's either pay the piper or do it yourself. Even if you do have the tools, equipment and skill to produce sanitary and safe pieces you're certainly ahead of the game but that kind of ability does not come overnight and it does have a high investment cost if you chose quality tools.
If you don't care about appearance, stuff can merely be yanked out and if necessary replaced with something that conforms to whatever rules you decide to run your car under. That's usually dedicated race car stuff though. Street machines will always straddle the line between race and passenger car identities. An unpainted, brake-bent sheet aluminum dash with three Auto Meter gauges and diamond plate panels riveted to flimsy fiberglass doors is light for sure but that approach won't get you much action on the street.
And then there is FMJ who looks at every single part of his car and tries to ascertain how it can be made lighter while retaining most or all of the particular parts' original strength and appearance. Ashtrays, door handles and strikers, steering wheels all get the treatment. Generally nobody that I know of other than FMJ (myself included) decides they're gonna shave off a a pound or two by RE MAKING their steering wheel out of aluminum while keeping it looking like an original part. That right there is a key element to this methodology. Some people may not see the value of going to that level of detail. Plus, not everyone can sustain that kind of focus and determination either, especially when cars come and go in life. Maintaining that bucks down, DIY strive and drive with one car for thirty years is pretty unique.
I'd say I have my feet planted in both worlds but tend to favor buying stuff over getting too deep into sleight-of-hand trickery. There's a bunch of brackets and such you can't see under my dash that have been massaged. I stripped off all my undercoating and repainted the bottom of the car with factory-style grey dip epoxy primer. I get rid of all unnecessary wiring, creature comforts and whatever dead weight can be jettisoned in the name of better performance but I don't leave that stuff as-is either. I take the time to search out and obtain things like factory correct heater and radio delete plates. Some of those things took me years to track down.
At one point I even obtained an early A body right-side heater delete vent box from someone in Australia because that's what the Super Stock Hemi Darts and 'Cudas had. They were standard production parts down there for several years because Australian cars have the heater box on the left (right-hand drive). I have to think I'm the only person that's ever done that. The guy who sent it to me thought I was nuts since shipping the thing was like triple what the part was. But try to find one in North America!
Conversely, I do have plenty of mail-order pieces like a Kirkey aluminum seat, a pin-on fiberglass hood, a QA1 front end, an aftermarket dash with digital gauges and Wilwood brakes. None of those parts are over the top blingy gee gaws though so even at first glance they can blend in to the background unless you take a second look.
Details, details.
Well said Rmchrgr.
AAAhhh, the lightweight years of the 60's and early 70's. Who could, would forget the skunked Silver Bullet or Motown Missile programs.
I think my approach is simply based on generational reflection. 600 miles away in New York, I was simply too far and too young during the dawn of factory STOCK and SUPER STOCK. Later on, it was my awareness of those experimental years in STOCK and SUPER STOCK that has led to this light headiness now.
Yes, as we all say, we're all happy to have grown up in our respective eras whether it be the 50's 60's 70's 80's and beyond, but I'm happy that I grew up partly in the 60's and barreled through from there on. It was truly a hands on life experience.
When it came to cars, I might have missed some pivotal moments and places in history, not that New York didn't have its own, but that doesn't mean it can't be brought right back to the surface for a new generation with a little more flare and dare.
What I did see first hand was the recreational part of street car culture and then I witnessed and participated in the middle to tail end events of high stakes SUPER,SUPER STOCK street action. When I say SUPER,SUPER STOCK, I really mean the post '67 era when the cars that had been secretly developed over a short period were in the ring.
It was truly a special time to watch guys improvising (sometimes delinquently) under shade trees in order to let it all hang out on the Blvd's thereafter.
Of course the real hinge here for all of us is the ever so coveted SUPER STOCK years when the factories finally dipped their skillet into the fire to save their own reputations through a variety of "behind The Curtain" programs. Infamous code names such as WO's and RO's, BO's and LO's, Swiss cheese and ThunderBoltz, Z11's and ZL1's will forever be inextricably linked to signage such as Woodward and Ramcharger garage, Dearborn Steel, Kar-Kraft, Nunzi's, Apollo Trick Titanium and Nichels Engineering just to name a few. It is here where the fascination is clear and nuclear.
Aside from wishing to have been flies on the walls of any of these facilities at the very least, I can only imagine what any of us working as go-for coffee boyz or mechanics assistants would have done with all those recourses on our laps.
Perhaps that's what brings us here to read.
If I were thinking then how I think now, cars would have been floating off the the showroom floor.
