Weight Saving on a Modern Ferrari

I am sure if you thoroughly disassembled random parts of the car you could find ways to save weight. I personally would start with a super light weight wheel/brake set. I'm sure the suspension bits could be improved upon weight wise as well. If you wanted to get REALLY serious you could probably take out the air bags, sound system, air con. etc. I would concentrate on rotational mass. Light tires, wheels, and brakes as I said before hand, but maybe a light weight fly wheel, clutch, etc.

 

Well you could always do without a roof and remove all passenger side items (like the seat for example).

 

I trust Ferrari made them as light as possible without sacrificing too much sound deadening and thickness.

 

Also, and after market exhaust is a GREAT way to save weight.

 

No "fat chicks" always works for me...

 

my friend's dad had a 512 tr (a fairly heavy car)..took out the seats and put in momo's..switching to smaller/lighter seats makes a significant difference in weight..

 

Suggest a lightweight battery. Lots of opportunity to save alot of weight. There have been several threads on this subject.

 

Forget Recaros - get real, lightweight sport seats. While you're at it, gut the rest of the interior. Sort of like an Enzo/Challenge Stradale/430 Scuderia. Those cars don't have carpets or power seats - the Enzo has roll-up windows (I don't know if there's been an advance in power window motors since 2002). Strip the interior and keep only what you need - seat, steering wheel, gear shifter. Then ditch the hood for something carbon fiber - same with front and rear fascias, the rear deck lid/trunk and the rocker panels. Get some lightweight wheels and you should be good to go.

 

Treadmill for the driver?

 

Probably the single most heavy thing you'd toss is the climate control. Invest in lots of carbon panels, plexi windows, carbon seats, throw your interior out, sparewheel and jack (if any), replace exhaust.

Ferrari lightweight? Take the front bumper off of a 550....

 

Why saving all the weight? save your ears, keep the sound proofing.

you dont track them anyway?



yes, some do. credits to you, its the way it's meant to be.

 

This -has- been tried before. Be careful what you wish for...
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I'm still wondering how they got the F50 GT down so far from the stock F50. aside from the bracing for the convertible where/how did they manage to cut so much weight?

 

Recaro seats themselves are not neccisarily light. get a Carbon Fiber non-reclining racing seat, ditch the passenger seat (prob 50 lbs right there) as well as the entire rest of the interior inlcluding the carpet, speakers, the whole a/c unit, but as said above, a really lightweight wheel setup will be best single thing. it not only drops dead weight, but its rotational mass in the drive line, which basically means more HP to the ground. Full Titanium exhaust if you really wanna get serious.

a racing steerng wheel will drop a few pounds overall, but not to many. the wheel is light, but the adapter hub is kinda heavy so it makes up for it. I ran a momo wheel in my car and its not really worth the weight savings, but I did it for the feel and quality.

 

lol! +1

 

Guys,

Weight loss programmes have to be done a bit more scientifically than just junking bits of your car otherwise you'll end up ruining the balance or useability of the car that Ferrari engineers have so carefully considered in their CAD/CAM calcuations and computer based physics simulations. I have been doing this for quite some time now, slowly and carefully transforming a 360 Modena to beyond Challenge Stradale spec weight loss to suite my exact needs and tastes (as a hobby). Ferrari did a pretty good job considering the budget and constraints their engineers had to work with. Once you understand the specific weights of different parts of the car you can really set to work but you must be respectful of the balance of the car, left to right, back to front and get the car fully corner weighted once your done so as not to actually make the handling worse than when you started out!

In the UK there is a lot of the F1 technology is being done by small independant specialists around Silverstone racetrack, lots of knowledge, resources and skills can be tapped into if your canny and choose to approach these companies in the off season times when they are not busy.

On a 550 Maranello you can pretty much drop around 250-300kg's (upto 660 pounds).
On a 360 Modena you can strip around 120-180kg's (upto 400 pounds).

Weight reduction is just like power gain except you notice it everywhere not just on the straights but in the twisties too so its a win-win situation for track driving, especially if you track your car often.

Contrary to popular belief though its NOT cheap to do well and can consume an awful lot of your time and energy.

4 of the best quick weight losses on most Ferrari's are;

1. Carbon seats - junking the original electric chairs (cannot remember off the top of my head but it can be between 32-50kg's saved depending on the seats you replace with!)
2. Titanium exhaust - titanium is vastly lighter than steel (stock system is over 31kg's, saving 24.5kg's on the 360 alone, and thats excluding cats and headers which are also very heavy...)
3. Race Gel Battery - 50% reduction in weight over led acid batteries, removal of battery cover and tray (saving 12.5kg's)
4. Remove non essentials - floor mats, stereo, speakers, toolkit, tire foam, etc. from the front compartment and passenger compartments (around 10kg's)

You've gone and saved between 70-90kg's one just seats, battery and exhaust (assuming an ultra lightweight Titanium system). Big savings but at what cost... something has to give...

A lot of people complain that...

1. Fixed back carbon racing seats are more uncomfortable for long distances...
2. Titanium exhausts are too loud for everyday use
3. Gel batteries require connecting to a battery tender so they don't go flat
4. They actually like floor mats and having a toolkit.

Thats the trick about weight loss - not everything suits everyone. Ferrari tread the fine line very well.

For most people who want a lighter car its a lot simplier and safer on their investment to just buy a special edition like a 360CS or a Scud.

 

Other things to consider I didn't write about in my original post are aerodynamics, drag and downforce, braking performance and optimisation of materials technologies such as more use of carbon and titanium vs steel and aluminum. Getting all of this right alone typically requires the use of an entire engineering team (each with their specialist skills) or a heck of a lot of time (!). The aerodynamics is a whole science in itself and require prohibitively expensive wind tunnel testing to really prove the gains/losses.

So are you now so sure you can do better than Ferrari?

Do you know how that aftermarket rear diffuser is really going to effect the handling, downforce, steering and so forth at 200mph? Not the kind of thing you really want to experiment with unless you really know what your doing. It stands to reason if your really serious about tracking your car you should be looking at a non-road registered dedicated track day special car, if you must buy Ferrari to go to track days the Challenge cars fit this bill perfectly.

If you just do the occasional track days, fit slicks and go on a driver training course. Its the best modification you can do, to you the driver!

 

Was good if you like unibody but the Cars should have the very best wheels and aluminum wheels are inferior to mags. Now,the Cars should have DyMags,www.rennworx.com.Oh yeah,8 grand a set and you shed 24lbs of rotational,you will feel that.

 

Unsprung Weights
On the Stradales, Scuds and F430's with Carbon brakes a lot more substantial unsprung weight can be saved by going further than Ferrari did.

1. I agree that these carbon wheels from Dynmag sound fantastic (even though they are pricey), huge unsprung weight can be saved here!

2. Lets not also forget there is still quite a lot of fat in the unsprung weights, by using a CNC machine you could make some up lighter weight center bells than the factory ones (the center bells are very heavy, almost as heavy as the ccm discs themselves!).

3. Next you can then junk the factory brake caliper bolts (very long and very heavy) and replace them with titanium ones (no I'm not talking about the wheel bolts but the caliper bolts which are still in heavy steel), these would be even more useful than the wheel bolts because they are much longer, trouble is since they are not visible parts Ferrari didn't feel the need to do them