How to put your car on a diet

[mikepologti]

Hi guys , got curious and asked around about removing seat. (yes mods before you delete this post i know its done before) however, i rang my insurer , qld transport and i currently have a few contacts with the police and they all seem to be happy. so today i removed my back seat and decided to weigh up some items.

Back seat , including back rest and seat components : 32kg

spare wheel (i have a 16' spare and i have 17' wheels hence redundant and hell what else is vw road assist for), jack , some upolstry : 20kg

odessey 680 battery, and removal battery mounts and factory air box : 13kg


+ 2kg bmc cda (i think it might even be lighter)

+ 2kg custom battery mount made by your truly

= total reduction of 61kg

now all i need to do is lose 15kg and she'll really be a light weight

so just in case you were wondering if all this back seat removal was worth it id say yes , hell you can do half this mod with no cost infringed at all.

[Kai]

i have none of what you listed and i have even more stuff taken out. lol.

[noone]

Sounds good!

Were you Mighty Mods inspired?

[seangti]

but hows the road noise with out that back seat? I notice increased noise without the parcel tray and seats folded forward when I put bikes in, let alone removing the seat and it's sound absorbing ability.

Mind you, that's huge weight reduction. How much do ferrari, porsche and lambo charge to lighten their beasts...

[insanekiwi]

having 17 inch wheels doesn't mean, 16 inch won't fit as spare...
good weight saving! When I go track, I remove all head rests except for driver's, remove sparewheel + tools.

How difficult is it to remove rear seats completely?

[mikepologti]

isn't that difficult at all , floody gave me the heads up. the larger portion of the back rest you have to fiddle with a little bit at differant angles, but seriously this took less then 15 mins. there is a lil bit of extra noise but most of it is just seat harnesses etc.i also took out parcel shelf and the flooring that covers the spare, what else did you take out kai? , as crazy as this sounds i was even looking at recaros , and they do actually make a seat that fits our cars. so far i havnt taken her for a test run , but i might tomorrow, just for a bit of fun.
funny enough i actually did all this before i watched the mighty mod vid , ironic i know.

to remove the back seat, climb into the back and use the seat release to move the seats forward. on both sides near the exterior of the car you'll notice a gray little fastener that's keeping the seats from simply pulling out. get a flat tip screw driver and gently push them back towards the rear of the car, then pull the part of the seat out of its housing, once released manouver the back rest towards the side of the car to pull the other side of the hinge out of the centre holder. the whole back rest will come out. the other (larger side) , requires manipulating it in all sorts of angles and gently pulling towards the side of the car, to make life easyer unbolt the centre seat belt where it connects to the floor , you'll get there with a little patience. once there both removed you can simply remove the seat parts by unhinging where they attach to the floor.

[kelvniii]

Very inserting topic! i see lots of people asking the same in others forum too... asking how to put your car on a diet... but anyone think of diet yourself first?
just my 2 cents

[insanekiwi]

Not a bad point... I had a guy who owned a Starlet Turbo with huge amount of work gone on it... I think he weighed at least more than 120kg... what's the point.... little car and you weight at least more than 10% of the vehicle...

Hmmm...

Yes, empty your bladder and bowels before you go drags next time!
Also never run your car with full tank
Maybe even run coolant and minimal level + throw away the window washer bottle or at least empty it out.

Hehehe.... just kidding.

For me, I won a 5 door car, I don't mind the car seats fold on rear... just that brings up significant road noise... so I like to keep the seats up.

[jamesatfish]

Have applied the diet theory to my Polo also.

Certainly there is a lot more road & exhaust noise in the car without the interior trim, which is as you'd expect. You also get some quite noisy vibrations where plastic parts previously held fast by other bits of trim end up resonating at idle.

For street driving I always keep a 17" spare with a socket wrench and jack - yes there's VW Assist but it takes less than 5 minutes to swap out a wheel so I'd rather not wait for someone to do that for me. Being a TT rim the back plate is too thick to install the toolkit that usually fits inside the spare wheel so the wrench and jack are secured behind the front seats.

[danish]

You could probably save yourself from alot of the rattles with some foam and electrical tape.

The seatbelts would be a massive annoyance smacking against bare metal constantly so just wrapping and taping them would help immensely.

[mikepologti]

wholly crap james have you weighed your car recently with al that trim missing?
should be interesting early next week , when my fuel tank will be near empty. took her for a ride today , definatly feels lighter with steering and handling. not sure about the whole exceleration aspect.

[Preen59]

You guys realise you have street cars, right?


I don't really see the point if you're only out to race yourself on track days etc but hey go nuts i'm not stopping you.

[Kiel_GTI]

You guys realise you have the fastest street cars in the world, right?

yea we know

[Plautos]

You did all that and you didn't remove the rear seatbelts?!

Did you remove the airbags!? They are heavy.

You can save more 60kg replacing the front seats for race seats....

Have applied the diet theory to my Polo also.

Certainly there is a lot more road & exhaust noise in the car without the interior trim, which is as you'd expect. You also get some quite noisy vibrations where plastic parts previously held fast by other bits of trim end up resonating at idle.

For street driving I always keep a 17" spare with a socket wrench and jack - yes there's VW Assist but it takes less than 5 minutes to swap out a wheel so I'd rather not wait for someone to do that for me. Being a TT rim the back plate is too thick to install the toolkit that usually fits inside the spare wheel so the wrench and jack are secured behind the front seats.

[mikepologti]

yea we know

hahah your a crack up man lol .

hey plautos is that to say that you have put race seats in yours? got any pics?