How Much Weight can you REMOVE from your Car? (Weight Reduction)

hey guys chris fix here with my e46 that i'm turning into an endurance race car and today i'll be stripping this car of as much weight as possible for two reasons one weight reduction because it's a race car we want less weight into the corners less weight while braking less weight while accelerating and it's a 16 hour race so every pound counts and two we have a cage builder who's fabbing up a cage and needs that entire interior gutted so he could fit it and weld it into the car so i thought it'd be cool to show you guys how heavy different parts of the car are and how much weight you could actually pull out of a car and to do that i have these really nice race scales each one of these scales goes underneath the tire and that'll give us an accurate reading of how much this car weighs before and after and how much each part we remove weighs now not only do i want to get a before and after weight but i want to see how much quicker this car accelerates from 0 to 60 before and after our weight reduction and breaks from 60 to 0 before and after our weight reduction and to do that i have a gps unit that will accurately track our results it'll give us our zero to sixty we could check our breaking from sixty to zero that way we could see the acceleration before and after our weight reduction as well as our braking before and after so let's head to the track and put our car to the test okay so we're at the track and we're going to line up in the same exact spot for each run and to keep it consistent every single time i'll drop the clutch at 4500 rpm all right and this is so easy to launch because of the all-wheel drive that was an awesome shift in the second and it took us 6.79 seconds let's do that again well that was a little weird not the best launch good shift and 6.88 seconds one last time good launch good shift into second and six point eight three seconds awesome nice and consistent with all three launches taking about 6.8 seconds from 0 to 60. now let's test the braking all right for the braking i'm going to accelerate to 60 miles an hour and then i'll hold it there until i hit the cones once i get to the cones i'm going to slam on the brakes and we're gonna get a measurement i'm using a gps to be accurate so let's see what we get and we have consistent but horrible braking distances at around 170 feet but at least we're consistent which is important so we could compare this to the car after we got it so now let's head home let's see how much this car weighs and see how much weight we could pull out of it all right i'm back from the track that acceleration blew me away that is way better than i expected for this 250 000 mile car but that braking well that braking was pretty bad my hummer breaks quicker than this car and that could be due to just old brakes that are worn out and old tires that are worn out so don't worry about it we will replace the brakes and tires before the race but right now let's go see how much weight we could remove from this car first we need to get the scales under each tire so let's jack up the car then we can slide the scales under the front tires and carefully let the car down onto the scales good and same with the rear slide the scales under the car and then carefully let the car down onto the scales alright so with the car on the scales i've always wanted to do this see what my car actually weighs accurately okay so it's a 330 xi we have a quarter tank of fuel remember this is the all-wheel drive version what are your guesses what do we think and this is brand new so we're gonna do something that is very satisfying let's turn it on we want to see our total weight and we have 3 370 pounds and i have a goal of getting this car below 3 000 pounds i don't know if it's going to be possible but let's get started and see so here's the breakdown for the weight reduction categories first we're going to see how much all the seats weigh then how much everything in the trunk weighs then we'll remove all the plastic interior trim and see how much that weighs then we'll see how much all the carpet and sound deadening weighs then we'll see how much the headliner and sunroof weigh and finally we need to remove the major components from the dash including the airbags and we'll see how much they weigh so enough talk let's get started and start removing stuff from the car the first thing we're going to remove are the front seats and the back seats and let's see how much they weigh usually seats are pretty heavy so to remove a seat there's typically four fasteners holding it in there's two in the front and two in the rear so let's slide the seat all the way back to remove the two front nuts located right here and yes i know i'll be using power tools but i need to speed through all this because there's tons of fasteners to get the whole interior apart so let's get these back two bolts out good and then we need to lift the seat up to get access to one last bolt which holds the seat belt to the seat good and with that removed we could tilt the seat back and get access to the wires under the seat and then we need to disconnect this harness like so and finally everything is disconnected so we can remove the seat from the car and man oh man is this thing heavy now let's remove the passenger side seat and you ready saw how to do this so and what a mess hidden under those seats don't worry about that we'll get to that once we remove the carpets now let's remove the rear seats and check out our weight savings the bottom bench seat pops out just like that and then it could be removed next let's remove the two side pieces from the backrest and they just pop right out as well and then to get the two back pieces out fold them down and then we need to unscrew the one bolt that's holding these two seat backs together and now each of these pieces will come out and these are actually surprisingly heavy and just like that we shed 180 pounds just by removing the oem seats and oem seats from all makes and models are very heavy that's just how it is there's a lot of safety items in there airbags the structural support so they don't just bend in an accident and electric motors for the power seats which is very heavy so 65 pounds for the driver's seat 65 pounds for the passenger seat and the rear bench seat is 50 pounds so we removed 180 pounds in just seats bringing us to 3 190 pounds and the good thing is our new racing seat that we're going to install and all the brackets only weighs 30 pounds so we just saved a ton of weight and it looks like we might hit that under 3 000 pound mark so now let's move to the trunk of the car so we could disconnect the battery and gut the trunk so let's pop the trunk open and there's a lot of junk in this trunk to remove but first let's go disconnect the battery and you always want to remove the negative terminal first when disconnecting the battery then we could remove the positive terminal and let's get this heavy old bmw battery out of here which still works pretty good and is valuable it weighs over 45 pounds and i already sold it to buy this battery it's a used battery i picked up off a prius in a junkyard for 25 plus it only weighs 25 pounds a small battery will work just fine because we're removing most of the electronics and we really just need this to start the car and keep it running and with the battery disconnected and swapped out now we could get all this junk out of this trunk and that was 25 pounds right there but wait there's more we have a trunk floor which is made of wood and then we have our very heavy spare tire which we're not going to need as well as a heavy jack and this light piece of plastic but every pound counts and since every pound counts there's some sound ending back here in the trunk that we need to remove and this stuff is what gives bmws of this error that crayon and waxy smell that you get every time you get in one of these cars all right and then finally all this spaghetti here look at these wires they're all disconnected they're tapped this is a mess here hopefully that doesn't cause any issues but this right here is our factory amp this is what we need for our harman kardon system to sell it which is gonna bring us good money and this also weighs a good five pounds and don't forget about the back of the trunk good and with that we removed everything from the trunk except a little bit of sound editing here here and right back there but we'll remove that when we remove the rest of the sound ending after we get that carpet out you have to use dry ice and it should be done all at once i'll show you that trick in a little bit so everything we removed from the trunk right here weighed 75 pounds which is awesome so we have about 25 pounds worth of plastic a little bit of sound deadening some carpets and then we have about 50 pounds worth of a spare some tools and also some fluids because this is a bmw you always need some extra oil so with our trunk completely gutted now let's move on to our next step and remove all the plastic trim from the interior and we're going to start from the a-pillar up here and move our way to the back of the car there's a ton of plastic in this interior so it's going to be interesting to see how much weight we actually remove so this a pillar trim is held in by three torx screws and with those screws removed this piece comes right out now we can remove the door sill plastic by pulling up hard and for once none of these plastic clips broke next let's remove the plastic trim under the steering wheel which also just pops out now down here we want to keep our hood pull working but first we need to remove it temporarily to remove the plastic around it then we can pull the trim out and then we could screw that hood pole back in so if we need to open the hood we can good next let's pop out the outside door sill plastic and now we're on to the b-pillar plastic starting with this down here covering the seat belt and the trick for all these plastics is using a hard jerking motion that way it pops right off and you don't break anything if you pull slowly you're more likely to break the plastic clips holding it in now we can remove the seat belt since we're not going to need these anymore and these are actually pretty heavy so moving to the back door we have our inner dorsal plastic and then the outer dorsal plastic then finally we can move to the rear deck and c-pillar and then for the c-pillar trim we need to pop out the light and disconnect the harness and then this trim comes right out as well now to get this rear deck out first we need to remove the speakers so pop the speaker cover off then unscrew the three screws holding in the speaker and then the speaker trim and speaker come right out and for whatever reason the wires to these speakers were already disconnected now with all that removed that allows us to remove the rear deck beautiful and then we can remove all the heavy seat belts back here as well as the plastic trim this insulation and the crayon smelling sound deadening and although these pieces don't weigh a lot when you add it all up it is a good three to five pounds just back here so it adds up quickly all right so with everything removed from the rear deck i removed all the plastic trim on the passenger side the b pillar and the a-pillar now let's go and remove the center console we need to be careful with this because it's in good shape and we're going to be selling it to recuperate some of the car's cost so remove the rear tray and disconnect the harness and then under there there are two screws to remove and this plastic trim comes right off now at the front we need to get under the shifter trim so pop up the leather boot unscrew the two screws holding the trim in and now the trim could be moved giving us access to two more screws holding the center console in now that the center console's free we can lift it out like that actually there's one more harness for the hazard switch so let's disconnect that and now it's free and finally there's two bolts holding in the armrest then that could be removed good and now we have to tighten back down the two bolts so the e-brake is held in place good all right so everything we have here weighs a total of 50 pounds bringing our weight down to three thousand and forty three pounds we're getting really close to that three thousand pound mark i think we're going to do it now look at this this is mostly plastics 25 pounds worth of plastics to be exact and our center console was the heaviest plastic piece at around eight to ten pounds and that's pretty good because plastic pieces are very light there's just a bunch of them so it adds up and then the other 25 pounds comes from our seat belt pretensioners from our speakers and our sound deadening from that rear deck that we removed so with all the major plastic pieces removed from the car now let's move on to the next step and remove the carpets and with these messy carpets i'm not even going to bother vacuuming i'm going to try to pull it all out and contain it just save me some time now we're going to start up here in the front and we have to unscrew a couple things remove the gas pedal and then we can take the carpet out so first we need to remove our gas pedal and to do that there is a tab here so get a flathead screwdriver and push down on the tab and then that will slide right out like that then we could disconnect the harness from the pedal and this plastic bracket has a bolt at the top we need to remove and then finally we could carefully pry this from the bottom of the bracket and pull on it without breaking it perfect and then that'll pop out just like that now we have this one fastener that needs to be unscrewed holding in the front of the carpet and a plastic fastener on the side that we have to pop out and finally we need to cut the carpet over here but don't cut deep just on the surface because there's wires under here and then that'll allow us to remove the front driver's side piece of carpet like so and then under that we have a piece of styrofoam that needs to be removed as well good now let's remove the rear section of the carpet by pulling it up and out sheesh this is a lot heavier than i expected for just some piece of carpet so get this carpeting out of the car good and now we have one last piece left and i already cut the edge of the carpet so we could pull it right out like that and don't forget that piece of styrofoam and we might as well remove the rear vent as well and check that out we hit our milestone by removing 45 pounds worth of carpeting that is crazy how heavy this carpeting is but we're below 3000 pounds now and just take a look at this look at how thick this carpeting is look at the insulation on it no wonder this is so heavy so carpeting 45 pounds removed and we're not done yet we still have to remove the sound ending that's bonded to the metal now it might be a little difficult to see to the untrained eye but we have a bunch of sound deadening in this car you can see right here this darker gray that is all sound deadening that dark gray right there that's all sound deadening sound deadening sound deadening all that up there sound deadening all that in there sound dangling that all has to be removed very important because this stuff is flammable once there's a fire also the welder who's putting the cage in can't weld to this he needs bare metal to weld to so it all needs to be taken out and in order to do that because this is very tricky to remove this is from the factory it's like a tar it's glued on there it's not coming off easily but the trick is to use some of this dry ice so that is 30 pounds of dry ice and that is going to be enough to do the sound ending in this entire car because we have a lot of sound deadening look at all that there is a ton and that's a lot of work to do so let me show you how to do this now before we begin make sure you open up all the windows and all the doors dry ice is carbon dioxide carbon dioxide is heavier than oxygen it'll displace oxygen so you don't want to work inside a closed vehicle make sure all the doors are open you'll have plenty of airflow that way you don't suffocate very important otherwise wear gloves so you don't get frostbite and let me show you how to do this all right so the first step is to dump a layer of dry ice onto the sound deadening so it covers it completely and then a trick is to insulate it so grab a couple of sheets of tin foil and cover the dry ice and this gets that sound deadening even colder now after about 15 minutes this panel should be frozen so remove the tin foil and expose that sound dead name then you want to use a rubber or plastic mallet and just hammer away at that sound ending because it's so cold it becomes brittle and it should break off in chunks if it doesn't it's not cold enough and then you could use a scraper actually in this case we don't even need a scraper all this broke off so we could just pick up the pieces and throw it out and then once you're done on one side move over to the next side and follow the same process hammer the sound editing loose and pick up the chunks that break off like so now for whatever reason in the corner where the seam sealer is the sound ending sticks to it and it takes a lot more effort to scrape it off but nonetheless it still comes up and then finally we're done with this section so vacuum it all up and move on to the next part of the car so there you go it's that easy to do let the dry ice do all the work for you let it sit for 10 15 even 20 minutes make sure it's ice cold you can't get it too cold the colder the better loosen it up with the hammer scrape it and pull it all up comes up in big clumps if it's not coming up it's not cold enough but you saw how easy that came up and that's all there is to it so i have a lot of sound deadening to do because this is a bmw they put a ton in here i'm gonna get to it you guys don't need to watch me do all this that'll be very tedious so with the magic of editing boom all of the sound deadening has been removed from the trunk to the midsection to the seats all the way to the front the only spot that wasn't removed is this right here and the same thing on the other side i ran out of dry ice and i'm running low on time so i just need to get this car ready and get it to the cage builder that's not in the way of the cage i'll get that out of there once the cage is in but all the other sound deadening has been removed so let's go see what it weighs and at 2 973 pounds we have removed about 25 pounds of sound deadening which is pretty impressive and there's still a little bit more left to do so you figure about 30 pounds of sound deadening total so now with that let's move on to the next step and remove the headliner and sunroof now removing headliners in most cars is very similar we'll start at the front removing the sun visors and you'll need a little pick to disconnect the electrical connector good then we can pop out the light and disconnect that as well and finally we need to use a pick to give us access to the two hidden screws that hold in the visor clip and then just unscrew them and that comes right out so with everything from the passenger side removed i also removed everything from the driver's side now we have to work on the center part in the middle here we need to remove the panel that gives us access to the sunroof motor so disconnect both switches from the harness then we just need to pop out the map light and disconnect that and finally there's one screw holding in the headliner up here so let's remove it so with everything at the front of the headliner loose now we need to start working on the side of the headliner and the sides of the headliner are held in by grab handles so pop off the covers and unscrew the two screws holding the handle in good with some editing magic the other one is removed as well and with everything on the side removed i did the driver's side as well now we can move on to the last step which is the rear at the rear we have a third brake light cover that pops off and then there's a plastic fastener holding the rear of the headliner in so pop it out and then finally we need to remove the motion sensor in the middle of the headliner right here so pop off the cover and disconnect the wire harness and we're good to go now the last thing to do is to remove the trim around the sunroof and with that out the headliner is completely free to be removed and you want to be careful here because it's basically just a giant piece of cardboard you could easily bend it and crease it and if you need to recover your headliner that's definitely not what you want so carefully remove the headliner and with that we just removed 10 pounds and not only was that 10 pounds but it's 10 pounds up high so that's pretty good it also gives us access to our sunroof and we have to remove the sunroof because in a rollover it could shatter and shards of glass could get everywhere which is definitely a safety hazard plus this has got to be pretty heavy it's made of glass which is heavy it has a lot of metal and there's electrical motors in there all of which are heavy and it's heavy up high which is bad for center of gravity so let's remove it so removing a sunroof is actually pretty simple there's a bunch of bolts in the front that we need to remove and then there's bolts that go along the edges on the side that we need to remove and this should come right out so let's first remove the five bolts holding in the front of the sunroof next at each of the corners we have a drain tube for when it rains this drains the sunroof so if the interior of your car is getting wet maybe the back carpets maybe the roof check these sometimes they get clogged with dirt and debris and leaves and stuff and then get water backing up into the car so let's remove the drain tube and then we can unscrew the four bolts holding one side of the sunroof in good and to prevent this from falling or potentially damaging the roof use something to prop up the sunroof or if you have somebody could help you have them hold up the sunroof as you unscrew the last four bolts on the other side and on this last bolt go nice and slow so you don't drop the sunroof and finally you can get under and carefully lower it down and this is actually pretty cumbersome and heavy so be careful so with our headliner and our sunroof removed we just lost 40 pounds our headliner is eight pounds and our sunroof is 32 pounds and that's really good because that's weight that was way up top at the top of the car and that's going to help lower our center of gravity now the only problem is now we have a large gaping hole in our roof but don't worry we have a lightweight sunroof delete kit that fits right in like that so let me show you how to install it now before we go and install this it's very important that we caulk the outside edge with an adhesive sealant so when adding sealant it's important to have a consistent thickness and make sure there are no gaps i'd rather it be too thick going around the perimeter than too thin because we want to make sure this seals all the water out so caulk around the entire perimeter of the sunroof delete panel good now before you go and just install the panel it's very important that you clean the mating surface with a solvent like alcohol to remove any dirt or grease so the caulk bonds to the car properly and we don't get any leaks so make sure you clean this area very well and check out all the dirt we removed now with that all cleaned up let's carefully get our panels seated in this hole just like that beautiful and then we're going to use the stock bolts to hold the panel in but i'm going to be using a large washer to distribute the load evenly on the fiberglass that way it won't crack so let's screw in the four bolts in the front then we could get our two bolts on the driver's side and that bolt in the rear and finally the two other bolts on the passenger side and that last bolt in the rear so that's all there is to installing a sunroof delete kit now our big gaping hole is sealed and this only weighs two pounds it's made of fiberglass so it's pretty light so in total we lost 38 pounds from our roof which is huge now the last part of our weight reduction is going to be to remove major parts of the dash all right so let's start here we need to remove this airbag it's going to be very heavy also we have this wood trim which we are selling to help recuperate some of the cost of the car so we need to be extra careful not to damage this trim and get the tool under the trim and pop it out good now we can remove the two screws holding the vent in and then the vent comes right out next let's pop open the airbag cover and in here there are four bolts holding the airbag in get those out and then we can carefully remove the airbag followed by the airbag cover good next let's remove the wood trim over the radio then there's two screws holding in the radio so we need to unscrew both of those and then now the radio should come out like that and the last thing holding it in is the wire harness so pop the clip up and pull that harness right off next we can get the climate control out and disconnect all the connectors on the back of this and there's a bunch here and then below that there's a tray that pulls right out and then below that to get the ash tray out we need to remove the shift knob and then the bezel around the shifter and then we can unscrew the two screws holding it in now let's carefully pull it out good and finally let's put that shifter bezel back on and for right now i'm going to keep it like this because it holds the window switches nicely and it's pretty lightweight all right so with all those pieces taken out we removed 15 more pounds from our car and we're still not done we can still do a little bit more i'm not doing it right now but we can remove the glove box i have all the registration and paperwork in there which we'll need for trailering the car and i also have to remove the steering wheel but again we're going to wait just because i need to do the 0-60 test and it makes it easier to get on a trailer when you have an actual steering wheel but right now the dash is ready to be removed with just four nuts we have a nut here and a nut there and then a nut there and a nut on the other side lower that steering wheel down and the dash will come out so the cage builder could weld up the cage and get it in and the last thing to do is install our racing seat perfect okay with our racing seat in that looks absolutely incredible let's go find out what our final weight is and it looks like we are at 2940 pounds remember we started at 3 370 pounds which means we removed over pounds from this car which is incredible that's over 10 of this car's original weight gone and i cannot wait to see how this car drives now we didn't remove absolutely everything there are other things in this car that can be removed for example the door cards part of the rules for the race we're in says that when your windows are rolled down you have to have door cards to contain the glass just in case the glass breaks in an accident it won't go into the driver's compartment so these are gonna stay here i will probably end up removing the speakers though because those are pretty heavy another thing is the airbags so i didn't remove the side curtain airbags because the dash has to come out for me to remove those so after the cage is welded in i'll go remove those airbags and then one last thing excess wiring there's tons of it we took a lot of stuff out you don't need all this wiring i don't want to cut it right now because i know my luck i'll cut it and the car won't start so after the cage goes in i'll start cutting out the wiring that we don't need and that's just more stuff to save you some weight so let's head to the track and go test this car out so we're at the track and already this car feels completely different i cannot wait to see how much faster this car accelerates so let's go do the 0-60 test okay moment of truth good launch good shift yeah yeah baby 6.17 seconds okay run number two 6.09 seconds and we have one more run let's see if we can get this below six seconds 4 500 rpms perfect shift in the second whoa 5.97 we are below 6 seconds for that 0 to 60. yeah yes finally we finished off with our 60 to 0 brake test and all three of them were right around 140 feet which is a lot better than 170 feet from before i think losing the weight helped but i also think we bedded in these brakes during the before tests which gave us a better braking performance since our brakes are so worn out either way this is a good improvement and less weight to slow down is definitely helping now back from the track and all i could say is holy smokes what a difference not lugging around 430 pounds worth of parts makes this car feels so much lighter and quicker i mean acceleration wise we saw it's quicker breaking wise we saw it break faster and it just feels absolutely nimble what a difference 430 pounds makes and i wasn't expecting i wasn't expecting a huge difference and it just it blew me away i mean it kind of makes sense the seats alone 60 pounds each the carpets 45 pounds all the fasteners that holds all this stuff in five pounds it all adds up and man oh man when you're not carrying that around this thing is a rocket so there you go that is how much weight you could remove from your car and that's being pretty realistic i could still pull out a couple more pounds and i will eventually but this car is ready to go to the welder i can't wait to get that roll cage welded in and as always i hope you guys enjoyed the video i hope you learned something new if you did remember to give it a thumbs up if you have any questions feel free to comment below i'll do my best to answer them if you're not a subscriber consider hitting that subscribe button and as always all the tools and products i used in this video are linked in the description the race is coming up soon so stay tuned

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 3,154,944

Rating: 4.9198318 out of 5

Keywords: ChrisFix, weight reduction, ChrisFixit, ChrisFix BMW, ChrisFix e46

Id: MCiNGmwopx4

Length: 27min 9sec (1629 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/littlelondonboy]

Wow, that was surprisingly entertaining. Nice editing and no frills, he just gets the job done and has his shit under control.

[u/howfuturistic]

So, I'm only mildly into car things, but this guy does it right.
"Here's a thing we're trying to do.
I'm going to try to do it.
Here's how it worked/didn't work and why.
End of video."

Now subscribed! Look forward to seeing more!

[u/DatMiQQa]

I recently got into an automotive upholstery shop and holy shit I wish someone would have shown me this video when I got started. I got okay training but it was mostly trial and error. This video was really well put together and I learned somethings I didn’t get in training! Plus very entertaining. Thanks for sharing!

[u/BojanM79]

One of the best channels on youtube.

[u/mud_tug]

Nice! I always wanted to see a weight breakup exactly like this one.

Now I wonder how much the roll cage would weigh.

[u/bostonwhaler]

Sport Compact Car mag did this years ago with a base model Sentra, but to more of an extreme... After they cut all the body off they got it to do a 5sec 0-60.

[u/buddboy]

tldw

how much weight did they remove?

[u/Rando321407]

Wonder why he didn’t replace the windows with plexiglass. Could have taken out all of the window glass and windows motors. Would have probably been another 100 lbs or so.

[u/Spinningdown]

Runs hand along the bottom of the camera frame