Carbon fiber upgrades?

[JoshBobGuptaMarley]

I've been trying to figure out how much weight you can save adding a carbon fiber hood. Since I have a 2012 1LT and performance upgrades are not available yet I'm thinking of starting with weight loss. The hoods are around 700, give or take. Does anyone have good feedback on going carbon fiber? Is it worth it?

[devildoc]

There are several vendors on C5 that offer reasonable hoods that are weight saving. If I remember correctly our hoods are made of aluminum and are pretty lightweight as they come.

[Beauwulf]

Seabon has some other panels if you've got the cash... lots of cash!

[devildoc]

Originally Posted by Beauwulf

Seabon has some other panels if you've got the cash... lots of cash!

Yummy....like an TOTL escort - expensive and sweet a$$

[JoshBobGuptaMarley]

I'm interested in how much weight I can actually shed. How much does the stock hood weigh?

[rolnslo]

Some other threads have this info but a stock hood without the pad on it tips the scales at 22lbs. Weight with the pad is about 26.5lbs. Going with carbon fiber is going to save you the equivalent of about 1-2 gallons of gas in the tank. There are many ways to drop weight in this car and not all of them are as expensive as carbon fiber body panels.

If you are looking to shed weight, check out the work that Doc did. He's been focused on dropping weight in his SS. http://www.camaro5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45165

[KMPrenger]

There are some topics on this issue.

The quickest ways to shed weight and make the car feel light and drive better is to replace the stock exhaust, and replace the stock RS 20's with a lightweight alternative. (Check out the wheels that member Beauwulf is running who commented above. They are the cheapest lightweight 20s I've seen, and actually look pretty decent) Reducing unsprung-rotating mass makes an even bigger difference than simply replacing body panels will ever do. Also, you can go with a lightweight battery. I think Braille makes 15 or 20lb batteries to replace the stock one, which I think weighs somewhere in the 50 lb range?

Doing the exhaust, battery, and rims alone will get you somewhere around 80 or 90 lbs dropped. After those easy ones, it starts getting much tougher for weight removal.

If you've got the cash to do lightweight panels, well then by all means have fun (not my money) but its gonna be very expensive.

[JoshBobGuptaMarley]

Thanks for the info. I was already gonna do an exhaust but I'm over 1000 miles from engine break in and I want to wait and make sure others get the right sound from the new engine. Unfortunately Im planning to do new tires later on, I kinda like the rs wheels for now. I do think 80 or 90 pounds is good enough. It sounds like carbon fiber is a waist of time so I'll skip it. If I mod to the point where I'm running out of things to do Ill look into it again. Thanks everyone for the great info.

[rtcat600man]

Are you looking to drop the weight for a day at the track? If so here are remove all the seats but the drivers.

front seat from a 2LT trim with leather and electric can save ......aprox. 48 lbs.

rear seat bottom is another 12 lbs.

rear seat back is another 18 lbs

for a total seat removal of 78 lbs.......