I was wondering where weight can be taken out of a beetle from the basic to the extreme whilst keeping it road legal in qld.

obviously remove spare wheel, jack, back seat, carpet and matting and anything else not needed.
Light weight rims.

Can glass be replaced with plexiglass or perspex, i heard all but the front. Can you make the side windows fixed and remove the wider mechanism legally?
Are aluminium front torsion bars legal on the road?
Is a fiberglass one piece front any lighter than the original?

thanks

I turned my 54 from a delux into a standard to take out more of the interior.
Glass bonnet, guards and decklid.
No carpet, loose all overriders
Good Luck,
T54

get rid of a lot of sound deadiner too. heaps around.

if you eva rebuild your engine, buy an aluminum engine block, they vw ones around.

roof. chop top it.

you can fix everything with a hole saw

beat me too it Andrew LOL

sorry if it sounds silly, but why do you want to lighten it? you can do some pretty radical things, but in the end most of them make the car very noisy to drive and not really street legal. eg. perspecs windows.

also, if you are seriously racing it, a roll cage will add weight, but it's weight worth having.

BTW, rod richardsons blue 61 is in VWMA this month, you could have a look at that car. it's got steel guards and such, but there's not much left inside it.

My theory is every kilo lost is one less to push down the strip. Plus the car is already pretty noisy.

I heard lexon windows are legal execpt on the front, in qld you need to maintain a opening mech on the side widows but i saw a leather strap set up that looks retro and would weigh in the grams.

Dont you only need a roll cage if it goes sub 10sec?

Chopping the top would be good but its already got a rag top sun roof.

Acid dip it - get them to leave it in a bit longer than normal

First point of call, make sure the driver weighs in less than 65kgs. If you can't get to that weight, get yourself trim.

Then interior, sound deading. Taliing to a mate on sat night, he said that fiberglass guards are worth about 0.5 to 1kg a side. Not much in the grand scheme of things, but if you that serious, a cromo cage rather than steel, ligthweight race seats. extra brackets etc should go. Light weight battery. Light weight rims. lexan windows, everyhting that can be pulled off the body should come off, remove excess material and replace. Also you should make sure you don't have 5 layers of paint on it, also always let the body get some surface rust and sand it all off (eg make the shell steel thinner).

Got myself a hanging scale last week, and so I'm about to start going nuts weighing different bits. I'm more circuit than drags, so my aim is to shift the center-of-gravity further forward. To do that I want to reduce weight at the rear of the car without reducing strength or roadworthiness - I've already moved battery etc. forward, so just swapping things for the lightest version is my next step.

So far I know that Australian (or German) steel rear guards come in at 3.3kg compared to 2.7kg for fibreglass ones, tho that'd depend on how thick the fibreglass is. Brazillian steel I suspect are a bit lighter again, but haven't weighed them yet since they're on the car at the moment.

Without going too crazy, other things I've seen on Improved-Production or Street-Sedan beetles are:
- aluminum rear apron (just a skin from 2mm sheet)
- aluminium bumper brackets (folded up from 4 or 6mm sheet)
- aluminium bumpers (suspect very expensive, and no idea who makes them)
- alloy guard bolts
- aluminium running boards
- molded plastic or alloy tail light housings
- lexan/acrylic windows, stripped out interior etc. as everyone's already said
- dechromed and shaved door/bonnet handles (all you need is a push button)

Like BiX says though, overall the weight saving is going to be 4/5ths of stuff all, but it should shift the CoG forward, but probably not noticeably.

There's a LONG time before this driver will get anywhere near 65kg, but 10kg loss in the driver is probably the easiest saving.

Titanium nuts. The bicycle racers use them and, into the bargain, you can tell everyone you've got titanium nuts.

hth

yeah all good ideas - I weighed the sounproofing and carpet from a bug a couple of weeks ago, I was amazed to find JUST the soundproofing and carpet from behind the rear seat to the back windows, plus over the inner guards weighed more than 8kg

Just how far do you want to go, a mate with a racing Mini has holes drilled in almost everything (I dont think he did the fuel tank) the accellerator pedal looks like swiss cheese and he has aluminium doors and panels. I have taken a lot of weight out of my car without going silly but the rollcage certainly added a couple of kilos. I recently made some fibreglass panels and they are almost half the weight of the original, but they were only 2 layers, whereas generally your standard baja style panels would be 3 layers to take punishment of offroad etc.

Keep us updated how things progress.

I was thinking of making some bumpers from 2 layers fiberglass and running 2 alum brackets. I am also removing more sound deadening, take the passnger set out for track days. Other areas to save weight are wheels (get some nice light ones will also lower rotational mass for acceleration).

Alum. bumper brackets at:

http://landproducts.ca/shop/product_info.php?cPath=1&products_id=59 

quote
These look stock but are ultra light weight aluminum. The fronts are just 212 grams the rears are just 358 grams. Durable powder coat finish.
unquote

hth