Late-night weight plight

"AestheticsInMotion" (aestheticsinmotion)
10/13/2017 at 02:55 • Filed to: None

It’s midnight and despite having to wake up at 6am tomorrow, my brain decided it wanted to write out a list. Okay... Here we go. From the factory my Miata weighed 2,250 pounds/1,020kg. Let’s do some simple napkin math to guesstimate how heavy it is as of right now.

Stock seats, which were thick, padded leather with heavy headrest speakers and even heavier sliding brackets. 55 pounds each, replaced by Bride replicas with garage star brackets, totalling 18 pounds each.

-74 pounds

Removed passenger airbag, removed stock steering wheel (with airbag) and replaced with removable wheel.

-25 pounds

Swapped stock 14x6 wheels at 10.8 pounds each for 15x8 alloys at 11.6 pounds each.

+3.2 pounds

Swapped stock brakes for a Willwood 4-piston brake kit. 3.5 pounds shaved per corner.

-14 pounds.

Stock cat replaced with flyin Miata high flow cat, everything past that replaced with an insanely lightweight fujitsubo racing exhaust. Stock muffler, cat and middpipe are slightly under 40 pounds altogether. Fujitsubo and high flow cat come to a hair under 20 pounds.

-20 pounds

Pretty much all sound deadening and about 40% of interior carpeting is removed. A decent amount of interior trim, both plastic and metal has been removed. I’m guessing twenty pounds total

-20 pounds

Removed the window washer tank, and all corresponding hoses, electrical doo-dads. For whatever reason the Miata has a MASSIVE stock tank, larger than a gallon of milk. Heavy when full, but I don’t know if the initial “from factory weight included washer fluid so we’ll keep the estimate low here

-2 pounds

Lightweight radiator. Cheap Chinese radiator off Amazon, bought and installed in the first week of ownership. The scale verified the lightweight claim

-3 pounds

LED headlights. Guesstimating here, but these suckers are very heavy compared to the stock lamps.

+7 pounds

Replaced my soft top, switching from a plastic rear window to glass. Hard to measure, but definitely picked up some weight there.

+10 pounds

Rollbar. Biggest weight gain, by far. Still pretty light considering it’s got a cross brace, harness bar and beefy mounting plates/hardware.

+42 pounds

Removed the useless sun visors

-3 pounds

My Xida coilovers are 7 pounds in the rear, 8 in front. I’m finding zero info on stock suso weights for an NA Miata... But an NC Miata’s spring/shock assembly is about 10.5 pounds, which is quite light for stock. We’ll use that

-12 pounds

Alright, that’s everything! Everything I can think of at least, I’m sure I’m missing a few things but this will be pretty close. Guessing... 2,080 pounds.

2,139 pounds/970kg! Not too shabby... Especially considering the car certainly isn’t stripped and is easily liveable, at least by my standards. 111 pounds have been lost overall. Now, time for the sad part.... Every time I climb inside, I’m adding another 175-210 pounds, depending on my current training regimen. Poor Miata trys so hard to add lightness and I have to screw it all up! I can’t wait to join the boost side and more than double the horsepower... won’t have to worry about shaving screws after that.

DISCUSSION (4)

BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires > AestheticsInMotion
10/13/2017 at 04:33

Neat! Love this sort of stuff :)

My mate’s got a turbo 5 and it’s a bit of a monster. 247whp and 210lb-ft. We’ve corner-weighted it (mods are turbo, exhaust, alloy rad, roll bar with door bars, sparco seats and an absent spare wheel). Came to 1040kg (2292lbs) 51.9% front sans-driver.

A little heavier than we were guessing, but still pretty light.

Wrong Wheel Drive (41%) > AestheticsInMotion
10/13/2017 at 08:40

Ahh good, so me weighing only 145 pounds takes care of that NB is heavier problem! I havent really thought much about weight savings though. Sure lighter should equal faster but +/- 100 pounds isnt gonna make a whole lot of difference (other than in the wheels, UNSPRUNG WEIGHT YO). I think the performance improvement of said parts are well worth it, even if they provide a weight “penalty”. Interesting to think about though, I’ve never considered a “gram strategy” like you are talking about.

AestheticsInMotion > BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
10/13/2017 at 10:18

Jealous! 250hp is what I’m shooting for. Even with the “heavier” weight his is at I can only imagine that thing is an absolute blast

BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires > AestheticsInMotion
10/13/2017 at 10:35

Yeah it’s bloody quick :) it’s just on the borderline of what the stock rods will take torque-wise (they had to plateau the torque for most of the rev-range to protect them), but it’s still a bit of a beast.

I’ve yet to see anyone with a turbo MX-5 be anything other than delighted by them :) definitely go for it!