Addition by Subtraction
In racing, “adding lightness” is a time-honored tradition. Here at TARP Racing, we’re nothing if not traditionalists. And so it was that we gave our most recently acquired MR2 a reverse makeover. As chronicled briefly the other day, Dave and I worked the car over on Sunday. I worked it a little more last night, finishing the heater removal and removing most of the front firewall padding/insulation from the area where the heater used to reside. And although I haven’t weighed them up yet, I would bet that we have taken at least 7 pounds of screws, nuts, and bolts out of the car, all of which were holding in pieces that do not contribute to speed or safety. In other words, 7 pounds of fluff. Photos after the jump:
To understand the scope of the lightness that we’ve added to the car, it might be helpful to start with the ”before” photo. Here’s what the interior of the car looked like on Saturday afternoon before I started on the teardown operation:
And here’s the after:
For those of you who are worried that this car is going to look like it’s worth more than $500, worry not. At this point, it looks like you couldn’t pay a scrapyard to haul it off, which is absolutely perfect for our purposes.
One thing that I discovered last night is that Toyota sprayed some sort of plastic noise-deadening material on top of the floor panels. It will chip off with the application of a flat head screwdriver and a mallet, although a cold chisel would probably be a more effective removal device. I’d bet we could save 10 pounds or more if I can chip all that stuff away. It remains to be seen if I’m crazy/motivated enough do to it.
As I mentioned the other night, do not get between Dave and a dashboard when there is a sawzall in his hands. The man is a machine:
Here’s a shot of all the glass. Removed with a screwdriver and a lot of love, rather than a steel hammer and a broom. I don’t know if I can sell all or any of this, but I really just didn’t want to cover the floor of my garage with bits of safety glass. You never get all of that stuff cleaned up. As you can see in this photo, the top of the engine in this car has not bathed in oil, unlike Blue:
Here’s another shot of Dave doing his dirty, dirty business in the car. Nobody can doubt his commitment to the project at this point; I think that he bled on at least half a dozen of my hand tools on Sunday. I didn’t know that blood tests were going to become a required element of being a TARP team member, but Dave apparently has different ideas. One suggestion for Dave: get a tetanus shot!
And here’s the inside of the driver’s door. There is still a lot of unnecessary sheet metal on this door — basically everything below the door lever — but I’m hoping that Grayson has a plasma cutter that we could use to add lightness to this door. I’ve always wanted to learn to use a plasma cutter.
Finally, here’s the tub area where the seats used to reside. Those mothers are heavy, at least 30 pounds each. I was so-so on replacing them with a dedicated racing seat before, but it makes little sense to do all this work to remove weight only to put a chunky and not very racing-oriented seat back into the car. Now we just need to find one that is light, cheap, and suitable for our purposes:
Looks great! After all that work, does it still run? Because ignition wires, ECU leads, etc. don’t give much resistance to a sawzall.
The ECU isn’t anywhere close to where Dave was applying his sawzallitude, it’s back in the trunk, behind the engine. I don’t think there were any wires up there for him to cut, though, and we’ll be re-wiring the ignition anyway to comply with the kill switch requirement. I suspect we will want to put a starter button on this ride anyway rather than the key, for any number of reasons, but primarily because the bottom half of the lock cylinder in this car is (well, was) held on by duct tape.
yes on plasma…how about an air chisel to remove the plastic
Awesome. Yeah, I think that would work on the plastic. It’s pretty brittle, or at least it was last night in the barely-above-freezing garage.
I assume we’ll need to bring the car(s) out to the ranch shop for that work. What’s your schedule look like? I’m in town through the 22nd and then out through the 29th. This weekend is totally clear for me.
Saw an article the other day that recommended looking for e30 BMW’s at the junkyard on the $20 all-you-can-carry sales. Those cars had the battery cables wired up in the trunk so they have a long-length 0-gauge battery cable stretching the entire length of the car. Very handy to have a couple of those for wiring up our kill switch. Will we be able to/want to get our steel wheels at the junkyard too?
I want to make the engine lid out of clear plexi w/ slits or loovers cut in it. That way you can see the motor just like on a Ferrari F40
Does the kill switch have to be driver accessible or does it have to be somewhere on the outside for track officials to get to…I’m guessing the latter for safety. Does it have to just be an engine kill or a battery disconnect and engine kill?
just read the rules. we could put it right on the b pillar next to the battery and be legal. And it has to do both, ignition and battery-probably already know this…look under the roll cage section and you’ll see the lightning bolt and the “kill” label
Since we’re taking a good amount of weight out of the pass. compartment, would it make sense to move the battery–for balance purposes? Either into the passenger seat tub, or up into the frunk?
The reason I asked whether the engine started again post-sawzall is because I can envision a situation where the car is running on Friday night, and then a weekend’s worth of demolition/mods are made, and at the end of the weekend, ready for a test drive…and it doesn’t start. And then everyone looks at each other with a “what did we do to fuck it up?” kind of expression. I don’t know as much about cars as some others, but I do know they can have some harmless looking parts which are actually vitally important and/or sensitive to blunt force as well as sharp blades. “Modify then test” seems to me like a pretty good policy.
I didn’t start it up last night, but I did power it up to flip the headlights up (for removal) and the electrics all still worked. While your concern is understandable, one thing that you can be certain of is that as cautious as I am with demo on the car, Dave is 10x more cautious. He didn’t even nick a wire with the sawzall. No wiring or electrics have been cut or removed, save the rear window defrost circuit and the interior dome light.
We may want to consider moving the battery, although it does balance the engine compartment pretty nicely. I would think if we would want to move it that it would be into the frunke, Hans.