Official E36 318ti Weight Reduction Thread
 

Alright guys. I thought I'd create this thread to help anyone looking for weight reduction in their 318ti for Drag or Circuit racing.

If you got any tips for reducing weight and how to go about it, post it in this thread. It can help people in the immediate time or serve as a great reference for the future.

We've got a great bunch of collective knowledge on this board. Let's merge our experience and share it with the greater community. If people can also provide details of the weight lost, that would be great!

I'll be putting up pics and possibly vids.

This thread will be broken up into sections

Exterior / Body / Wheels
Interior / Electrical
Engine / Transmission

If there's any improvements you beleive can help people out, let us know and I'll make the changes if necessary.

Exterior

* Replace glass with perspex

Body

* Carbon Fibre Bonnet (has anyone got weight loss compared to stock?)

Wheels

* Loose the spare tire (has someone got the weight? I lost mine lols)

Interior

* Remove the back seats (pics come)

1. Remove rear parcel shelf
2. Lift the base of the rear seats and remove
3. Fold the rear seats down
4. At the rear base of rear seats in the middle, ther is a metal latch that is screwed in with a torx screw. Remove the screw and the latch
5. Lift the rear seats back up.
6. In between the side seat padding and the rear seats, at the base hinge there is a clip that holds the seats in place. Remove the clips on both sides
7. Remove folding rear seat support.
8. At the base of the side padding is a plastic screw. Unscrew them both on each side.
9. Remove the side padding.


* Remove rear speakers (pics to come)

Note: This should be done after the rear seats have been removed

1. Carefully remove side lining
2. Remove internal side foam packs
3. Disconnect the speakers on each side
4. The speakers are mounted with 4 metalic screws and one plastic one. Both are different sizes and you'll need a socket set to remove.
5. Carefully pull out the speakers from their mounts. The seat belt will still be attached. Simply slot the seat belt out

* Remove rear tools
* Remove floor mats
* Remove Passenger Seat
* Replace BMW Seats with lightweight race seats
* Sunroof delete
* Roof lining delete

Electrical

* Change over to a smaller battery
* Remove speakers
* Remove excess wiring

Engine

* Remove washer fluid
* Remove bonnet heat shield
* Remove air compressor for air con (Estimated 17 lbs saving)

Transmission

* Lightened Flywheel

* reserved *

* reserved *

I put a bunch of weight measurements in my rally car build thread. Feel free to drop those weights into your first set of posts.

FWIW, often times aftermarket CF hoods are heavier than their fiberglass counterparts. A true CF only hood would be lighter, and dry carbon lighter still...but most commercially available stuff is fiberglass with a carbon top layer for looks.

Dave

body: there's the sunroof delete, about 30 pounds or so and it's right at the top of the car

If you were serious about losing weight, ditch the battery and get a portable jumper unit. Or AGM battery would also lose you weight.

Thanks, I'll look into it :)

Cheers :)

Good point. I'll leave it up to the individual to decide if that's practical for their application.

i bought the vis euro type R hood it saved 23lbs compared to stock hood.make sure you clear coat it tho my gloss coat is pretty milky now.

F*ck y*u! I hate spammers! Hope you wind up driving a Yugo!

old thread,but for information's
my 328 ti weight 2260 lbs with full tank
2425 lbs with me

Old thread but I've been giving this some serious thought lately for a recently acquired TI that could be an all out track car at some point. Here goes my line of thought:

I'm thinking of building up the performance through NA methods. There's a very good ITB kit now available for m42/m44s through Racehead Engineering in Australia. There's a very long m42/m44 forum site thread on the package and it's shown to give slight increase when just bolted on let alone with the proper combination of engine work. I realize though this will hit a certain end point after applying the RHD kit, more aggressive cams, better flowing exhaust, tuned setup, and a few other things. So here's the second line of thought.

How about going for broke on the weight savings without really having much of a budget? This should help alot combined with the NA stuff mentioned above. I'm thinking about all of the weight savings above plus a few spins of my own. For the battery I'd go with a capacitor based pack. There's a guy on youtube showing the build and performance of a super capacitor based battery system. In this case I think it would be more than adequate and would be lighter than an agm. Another thought is to replace the rear hatch with the one and only produced carbon fiber one. There's about 20 plus pounds in weight savings there if I recall. Then cf fender replacements, cf hood, and any body kit stuff as light weight as possible. Throw on some very light wheels as well. A friend of mine is a highly skilled fabricator and does stuff with Titanium these days for the aerospace industry. I've talked with him about getting a ti exhaust fabricated from Titanium. Not at all cheap but weight savings there too and I did mention above an all out weight savings without cost type of deal. The only thing I can think of next would be to cut out a significant portion of the roof skin and replace that with a custom made sheet of cf. Of course gutting the interior would be there too. I'm thinking all of this together could probably put the TI sub 1800lbs at least.

It would be costly but certainly a different approach than anyone has ever done versus the m5x / s5x swaps and not worry about the weight.

Ok so I know this might not be relevant but I am in the process of going the opposite direction on my 318ti. I'm looking at getting all the interior bits. If anyone does removes interior pannels successfully without damage, shoot me a PM I would love to take these bits off your hands.

Sent from my VS415PP using Tapatalk