Carbon Fiber, anyone?

[Makavelli]

Hey, has anyone replaced various body parts with Carbon Fiber or some other lightweight material? I see a lot of hoods done nowdays, and am considering it.
Also want to replace the doors and hatch with lighter material. The glass in the hatch can go plexiglass...

How much weight do you think this would shave?

How much do you think something like this would cost?

 

[mcpcola]

Fiberglass doors will cost you 1500 or more since it would be a custom job and Carbon fiber would be more. you can replace just the outer skin but you would not be saving much there and as for a hatch good luck that is a larger order

 

[Ne0z]

the rear glass weighs a damned assload... i should know, i no longer have one... lmfao, the hatch stays up with my ONE strut that i have now...

 

[Mr.SelfDestruct]

IF you had infinate funds, you could make the first ever sub-1000 pound supra....

 

[Orion ZyGarian]

sub 2000 lbs with an infinite amount of disposable money, but no where near sub 1000...

Duane of Carbon Fibre FX makes CF hoods. Check the CF section of SM for the website. Also, I'm looking into getting a top secret sort of style hood made for the MkIII...except a bit more boxy/less round than the MkIV counterpart. Your best bet is to get one from Duane since he already has made them and has specific prices and I havent had one made nor do I know the price, though within a month or two I'd like to get it started.

 

[cwapface]

if you are really set on lightweight and NA, might I suggest starting with a different car. Play to the strengths of the supra, making the inherent weak points into the strongest points is going to cost you some serious $$$. Likewise, you could spend the money converting the supra into a wakeboarding boat but it would probably be easier and cheaper to just buy a boat.

 

[supra90turbo]

yep. im with cwapface. (that sounds funny...)
but, yeah... play on its strong parts. dont worry about replicating things in carbon fiber... its really not worthit. the hatch is not that heavy. the glass is what's heavy... i would use lexan, not plexiglass... find some uv resistant lexan somewhere. it wont fade or yellow as bad as plexiglass will. and as far as the doors, buy a spare set and hack them. cut out everything unnecessary inside, as far as "unnecessary" goes, that includes the crash beam, window and regulator, but this is racecar territory. nothing legal about this stuff...

if you want ultimate NA and lightness, build a crx.

 

[Troyota]

Coming from an owner of a Supra and an AE86 GT-S...I've stripped the A/C and Powersteering as well as swapped JDM front and rear bumpers (save like 70 lbs.) on my 86 and only shaved 120 LBS. It still weighs 2300 lbs started at 2420, my friend has a stripped interior on his and ultra light JDM doors, his still weighs over 2000 lbs. (2040) Change that over to the porker we have in our Supra's and it'd be damn near impossible to lighten the car that much and still have anything you could call a car.

 

[figgie]

JDM doors.... i hope for god sakes you never get t-swipped because with those doors. You WON'T survive when the car hits you. Noticed i said you. That because the "JDM" door don't have the structural support that we are mandated by the goverment to have in ALL cars available for sale in the states.

HENCE the carbon fiber door being stupid unless the car is registered for track use only. and then in that case this post would not have come up.

 

[Justin727]

most of that stuff is in the making besides the doors.

 

[americanjebus]

well your looking to lighten your car right, well why spend thousands of dollars trying to lighten a car that makes a buick look anorexic when you could just give it some more power to carry its weight.

if you really want to do this go for it but why spend thousands upon thousands of dollars making these custom parts and panels that provide no real structural support when your gains are probably going to be something like 400 pounds less than original weight.

your better off just stripping your interor for lighter seats and no real upholstry(or substitute for a lighter fabric) taking out your spare tire and driving with 3 gallons in the tank. i saw a wrx with a completely carbon fiber body like EVERYTHING carbon fiber and the body panels alone were probably more than the price of the car but the engine was stock. doesnt make much sense when a minor exhaust upgrade would have made a bigger difference.

 

[JerzeySlowpra]

i dont have carbon fiber and im at 2800lbs

 

[Mk3 TurboS]

When I imprted mine to Aus we had to get side intrusion bars welded inside the doors to make it legal as the JDM ones are kinda empty. So that just added to the wieght of my black fridge. But I just love it. And as for wieght reduction, You only need to do this when your at you peak power level. The power to $ ratio compared to the Wieght reduction to $ is stupid. Seriously if your thinking of spending all that money stick in a turbo. NO amount of wieght reduction will compare.

 

[Troyota]

I know that the doors are unsafe and are lightweight for that reason...they are not my doors, they are my friend's on his AE86. I was using them as an example of how the Supra is darn near impossible to get down to even 2000 lbs and still be a car.

 

[itr206]

Yea youll never made Sub 1k lbs.
My stripped front clip weighed 950 lbs when I took it to the scrap yard.

If you wanna do doors, hood, fenders, hatch and all lexan.
1. Dont plan on it being safe on the street, or even legal on the street as Lexan is not DOT legal.
2. Plan on spening atleast $5k said and done.

 

[SupraMario]

not worth it discused on the old forum.
put the money into a swap and turbo/tune the hell out of the 7m, u will be runing 11s for 1/10 the $$ of CFing a supra

 

[greg88]

I've heard that the heaviest part of a MKIII is the actual frame. With this in mind, what would stop someone from taking a lighter frame of similar shape, (i.e. 240SX, Prelude) making the necessary modifications and bolting on Supra body panels? Well, it would cost alot for sure, but that would be a pretty light Supra.

 

[Troyota]

Why not just build a tube frame...it'd be cheaper and easier and lighter...just cause the outside looks similar doesn't mean they are...a 240sx has a four cylinder engine, not an inline 6...that's just one of the reasons they are different enough to not make that feasible...

 

[americanjebus]

why not make a drag car from scratch instead of putting random nissan parts and toyota parts with homemade bits and trying to call it somethign its not.

 

[Adjuster]

Holy crap. You think building a Supra from a Prelude unibody is going to remotely work?

Front wheel drive chassis on the Lude, no where near the room your going to need on the tunnel area. The 240 might work, but why not just go with the proven Nissan parts? (SR 20 motor and some other simple mods, or go crazy with a RB engine.)

Changing over a few panels is not a car. The Supra is heavy because they designed it to be heavy and solid. I remember reading the articles in about 85 or 86 when this car came out. The Toyota design guy for the Supra said it's a heavy car, and it's designed to be very strong v/s light and weaker. This was not a goof, it's how this car was built.

The doors are heavy to protect the occupants. About the only panel worth changing over is the hood. You can shave a few pounds off the Supra with that mod. The fenders are pretty thin, quarter panels are thin, and the rear hatch glass is glass for a reason. You have no heater bars on your Lexan, and it's going to scratch up like crazy. Same thing if you used it on the side and quarter glass. The windshield is a structural part, so do not remove it and replace it with lexan unless you want to watch your Supra become a pretzel.... LOL