111r lightweight?

r10crw · Post by **r10crw** » Sat May 12, 2007 6:22 pm

Have all the 111r's got abs, servo brakes, carpets etc: etc: Did they ever make a lightweight 111r?, if they did id have it.

jamie · Post by **jamie** » Sat May 12, 2007 6:34 pm

Nope they are all quite heavy

r10crw · Post by **r10crw** » Sat May 12, 2007 6:39 pm

Not so good

A stripped out 111r would be a great car.
Jamie was your old car an exige or elise?

dezzy · Post by **dezzy** » Sun May 13, 2007 12:53 am

So, any ideas what could be done to a 111R to make it lighter? I can't think of anything off the top of my head (awaits "buy an S1" comments . . .

)

While the ABS, servo, etc. makes it heavier, I don't understand all the fuss about carpets.

Surely a couple of carpet mats don't add any significant weight to the car?!

robin · Post by **robin** » Sun May 13, 2007 9:21 am

There's a lot of other sound deadening material that counts as "carpet", and it does add up.

It's not so easy to remove weight such that it matters without spending money or mutilating the car ...

The flippant "start with an S1" is not so flippant really.

But for road use and the odd track day, who cares? If you were hill climbing or racing then you would care because it would make a measurable difference.

Cheers,
Robin

Dominic · Post by **Dominic** » Sun May 13, 2007 9:47 am

I have always been amazed how much weight can be saved from 'normal' cars. When we striped out the TSE BMW it came up on it's stiffened suspension by about an inch

. There is a huge amount of weight in the trim and seats in every day cars. Glass is a lot heavier than perspex too. My orginal autotest car, (Metro, built for brittish championship) was properly light. I could stand at the back of the car, and lift it so that both rear wheels were 12 inches in the air (& I'm not super strong

). The standard fit front seats that I took out my XR4x4 were so heavy I could bearly lift them

.

The elise is a different matter. It has been designed with weight saving in mind. However, (as tesco says) every little helps. If you took out all the little unecessary trim parts, carpets etc it would all add up. No single item is too heavy, but a big pile of them (in a bin bag) can be suprizingly heafty

. Same princilpe as a bit of paper; not that heavy, but a box of photocopy paper is!

There are enough ways to diet an elise; prob best to see threads about LOTRC (racing) stuff. As Robin says, for road or track stuff, there is little point. Lets face it, if an Astra or Golf is not too heavy to......

dezzy · Post by **dezzy** » Sun May 13, 2007 11:03 am

Wasn't asking because I intended to do anything . . . was just curious!

I completely accepted that I was buying one of the heavier Elises available when I bought it, but it was definitely the right model for me. I'm not a good enough driver for weight saving measures to make such a big difference and the features in the 111R that make it heavier are all things I wanted in the car.

I'd probably be better starting with shifting some of my own weight rather than looking at the car!

Cheers,
D

P.S. Robin, no flippancy intended in the S1 comment . . . hence the laughing smiley after it. I knew I'd get a few jokes back about that, so thought I'd get in there first with a pre-emptive strike!

Just a bit of banter!

robin · Post by **robin** » Sun May 13, 2007 11:36 am

Sure - I didn't think otherwise - was just pointing out that while the usual S1 vs S2 debates are total nonsense and an excuse for the homophobes, in the case of S1 vs 111R there is enough weight difference for it to matter in a competitive situation!

Cheers
Robin

Sanjøy · Post by **Sanjøy** » Sun May 13, 2007 11:47 am

Fir some MMCs

robin · Post by **robin** » Sun May 13, 2007 2:41 pm

NOOPS 160 wrote:I might take a run to the weigh bridge at the sawmill up the road and see what the 160 weighs just out of curiosity .
Incidentally bodywork ie the clam being hand made so to speak would I be wrong in thinking that there could be huge weight gains/losses regardless of S1 or S2 I always assumed the the newer S2 was heavier due to the Toyota engine and other fancy bits fitted .

The S2 clams are made using a different process and I think their weight will be more repeatable than the S1 clams. You are right that a basic S2 weighs pretty much the same as a late S1 - the real weight penalty comes with the Toyota engine and associated stuff - I know my 135R weighs in at ~745kg without fuel or driver - I wouldn't be surprised if the S160 with it's original wheels doesn't weigh in at much the same.

Cheers,
Robin

jamie · Post by **jamie** » Sun May 13, 2007 6:54 pm

r10crw wrote:Not so good
A stripped out 111r would be a great car.
Jamie was your old car an exige or elise?

Mine was an Exige - It was pritty heavy with the SC and 2nd cooling system. Gav (from LOTRDC) had his car down to about 850kg with mog seats and plastic windows etc (the car is now more standard for class A) if you take into account that the Exige clams are heavier I think you could get a 111r to 825 without getting very silly - doubt you would get under 800. (The 111r comes in at around 860 in base spec)

tut · Post by **tut** » Sun May 13, 2007 9:26 pm

I think that I mentioned this before, but how in any adherance to the spirit of the series, especially as it is based on a Lotus Elise, could they ban the use of MMC disks, when these were the original specification of the car, and in Chapman tradition, designed and sourced because they were half the weight of a steel disk?

That is plain bloody ridiculous.

tut

ps The likely responce is that they are no longer available to buy from new, but neither is a 1.8K engine, but even that does not come into it, as if they have been looked after, then they will last 100,000 miles. So a bog standard S1 owner with a pre July '98 car is told that he can not use his standard disks, which are 12 kgs lighter than the crap that replaced them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a load of bollocks..............

jj · Post by jj » Sun May 13, 2007 9:31 pm

I am pretty sure my basest of base spec S2 is no heavier than an S1. It has absolutely no options and is actually less specced than my S1 was (less suede / carpet).

Post by **campbell** » Sun May 13, 2007 11:49 pm

robin wrote:while the usual S1 vs S2 debates are total nonsense and an excuse for the homophobes

ROFL!

Ta Robin, just what I needed the night before I return to work following 2 weeks of bliss/hell * with new baby no. 2 [* delete as appropriate]

Campbell

robin · Post by **robin** » Mon May 14, 2007 7:56 am

tut wrote: What a load of bollocks..............

Tut, the point is that they would offer too much advantage to those that had them and as they aren't available in bulk, they wouldn't be accessible to the whole grid - I think it's only a restriction in class A? - i.e. in B & C you are allowed them. It seems fair enough to me to level the playing field in class A as much as possible. Of course everyone is going to build cars to the regs, so the playing field is always skewed towards those with a budget.

Cheers,
Robin