Rev 2 Liv

Another thread got me thinking. Since weight is the enemy of MPG and handling, just how much weight can be shaved off of a W203?

Unsprung weight and reciprocating parts are the most important area to save on so starting with the engine, Titanium con-rods, hollow camshafts are the first place to start. forged aluminum, steel, or magnesium wheels offer a huge weight savings in reciprocating mass.

Afterwards, titanium exhaust, carbon fiber hood/trunk and lightweight battery are where existing parts may actually exist.

Also, Carbon fiber drive shaft, spare tire removal, etc... are also areas to look at.

With readily available parts, regardless of cost, just how much weight can be saved on a W203 C320 without affecting safety, drivability, durability and comfort?

benzmodz

If you take out the spare tire the car is no longer street legal. It has to have that for safety reasons.

As for the rest of the dead weight ... you can only go so far and then you are riding around in a ghost car which cost more than an CL500.

JonathanMax

go on a diet

KIRA

find another GF, my research show me fat b!tches eat more money than my car does

C24owner

Try removing the carpet, and replacing it with something else. You'd be surprised at how much one small section weighs.

advans

loose weight.

there is a study/article out there that says something like, if you gain 1-pound per year, your mpg goes down by x%

remove liquids you don't "really" need, such as window washing fluid.

like nick said, remove the carpets.

remove your center console, remove your CD player. haha

Buellwinkle

You can remove the spare, use a can of fix-a-flat instead. Get rid of jack and anything else in the trunk. Replace the front seats with small lightweight seats and get rid of rear seats. Replace hood/trunk including hinges and hydraulic shocks with carbon fiber that's held down with pins. Remove the bumpers and just put the bumper covers over styrofoam. Remove all the steel bracing, motors, actuators, glass inside the doors and replace with a net or a plexiglass window, same with sunroof. Get rid of the A/C, it's very heavy. Switch to custom made aluminum pulleys. Remove the headliner, heck, any interior trim. Replace wheels with the smallest lightweight racing wheels and tires you can get.

You can probably get the car down about 500 lbs. and it will be much faster and more responsive.

Rev 2 Liv

The goal hereis to reduce weight transparently without affecting the luxury aspect of the vehicle. Those 8 way power seats weigh a ton as do all the airbags in the car.

My only issue with lightweight windows is that they are prone to pitting. I"d be more than happy to rip out the SOS communications sytem.

I consider this more of a feasability study more than anything else.

SeaCoupe

Rev, I don't know you, so I'm on my best behaviour here. I read your post yestarday and laughed.

Simple fact is, Most buy the car for the luxury, not to turn it into some type of DTM light weight cruiser.

You want fast, get the C32 or C55. The money you will spend will equal out to a used C32. Those cars can be had for the low 20s.

E

wingless

Use four lug bolts instead of five.

There is about 0.1 HP equivalence per pound.

When removing superfluous stuff, don't forget the wires, contacts and connectors.

Yank the interior. My all-time favorite song is Queen's, "I'm In Love With My Car" so the verse, "Told my girl I had to forget her" goes well with just a driver's seat. Don't forget to yank the headliner.

No spare, no jack, no tic-tacs, no body fat and lots of go.

Don't forget to keep the exterior waxed, for lower coefficient of drag. Also remove spoilers and air dams. Power retracting mirrors, sucked-in, decrease the frontal area, for less air resistance.

benzito911

hahaha

yal got some funny a.s.s comments.. haha

why make the car ligther? serious...

Rev 2 Liv

You're right, most don't buy the car to turn it into a DTM cruiser. The purpose of this post is just out of pure curiosity for a feasibility study. Not to turn it into a touring car to race.

The W203 is classified as a compact car. This compact car weighs 3500 pounds. That is alot of weight to me.

Weight creep has been pushing compact car weight up progressively since the 80's. Most of it is due to strengthened chassis, airbags, and telematics.

Even with more usage of aluminum throughout cars, average car weight has gone up significantly.

With gas hovering $4 gallon and resources becoming more scarce, what harm could a reduction of say 400 pounds without sacrificing any luxury, comfort, etc... do?

400 pounds less to haul is good for saving a some mpg, puts less wear and tear on the drivetrain, tires and brakes, and gives a more fun to drive car in the process.

I'm curious, to see how many grams/ounces we would see if only titanium or aluminum fasteners were used throughout the car.

I remember my tricked out Mountain Bike in '97 and spending $300 to replace every single fastener with Ti and Al fasteners saving about 46 grams which is about 1 1/4 ounce.

Car manufacturers are putting cars on diets by substituting aluminum in suspension components, engine blocks and body panels. Magnesium engine blocks are also being used in mass production by companies such as BMW.

Eventually, we'll see aluminum space-frame chassis replace steel sometime in the distant feature.

Obviously cars like the McLaren F1 epitomize what can be done if stuff is manufactured by hand and designed deliberately. The real question is, how much weight saving technology can be incorporated into mass production at affordable cost.

Carbon fiber driveshafts are standard on some cars, and aluminum hoods and trunk lids are standard on many cars. So lots of formerly exotic stuff is being incorporated slowly into mass produced cars.

BTW, everytime you fill your tank (17 gallons), you're adding about 140 pounds.

People don't realize that fuel economy after engine displacement and volumetric efficiency, is LARGELY dependent upon the amount of mass it needs to move.

So while features such as cylinder deactivation are a step towards improved mpg, I believe weight savings should also be a feature that consumers demand and companies market.

SeaCoupe

I understand what you are saying. The issues of enhanced safety and convenience have brought us vehicles with bad kurb weights. To put it to effect for you. I do have a project car that was approx 2,200 lbs, and currently she is at 2,050. The 150 lbs did make a differance.

Personally I think the biggest help to fuel economy is simply driving slower. Better gas mileage.

As for weight removal. I don't run with a spare, I don't carry lots of stuff, and I kept my stero simple. Just a small little 10 and a 4 channel amp.

To the performance parts with weight reduction, There just aren't many out there. Not for our cars. I would not want to put weight reduction over safety. In fact, I was just helping out with a 04 Mini Cooper S that hit a pole. The front right drivers tire had an impact that pushed the tire and suspension INTO the engine compartment. Not a terribly hard hit, but it easily bent the aluminum control bar. Of course that piece was not designed for a side impact, but you get the idea. The tire itself was okay, but the aluminum pieces can bend easily in impacts.

In the past I know BMW and some MBZ offerings have had weight reductions, but these were marketed to the hard core market. Those that track the cars. I honestly don't think you'll get consumers who will want a louder car because the sound deadening is gone. Eff, imagine if manual windows were an option on your car. Heck, even in my little Fiat, I kept the power windows.

I guess I'm getting older and lazier.

Ed

AcesHigh

You can remove a lot of weight in the body/chassis.
Don't bother touching the motor to lose weight, high cost vs. what you will gain.
If you must, replace the trunk and hood with carbon fiber pieces. Ideally the entire body can be of CF, but obviously the cost will be much greater --- the trunk and hood are pieces that are often mass produced and are often more affordable.
Then remove or reduce the interior sound deadening material (there is alot).
Next move to your luxury items like air con, stereo system, etc.
You can keep going with this process until your C is nothing more than a shell and an engine....

But as others have mentioned, why? A Benz is a luxury cruiser, if you wanted a lightweight shell then buy a different car.

mbhackie

Definitely remove the A/C system and the power steering pump. That will save you at least .01 mpg highway.

Rev 2 Liv

When engineering car, everything is a compromise when it comes to safety and packaging. Improving offset collision safety was a large focus of gov't and car companies in the 80's and 90's since an airbag and seatbelt ain't going to save you if you're crushed. To make these innovations reality, engineers added hundreds of pound (part out of necessity) to achieve transparency.

As a result, we got strengthened safety cells, collapsible steering wheels and engines that drop down in case of collision. All these innovations required

[QUOTE]
Exactly! Finally someone gets that this is an intellectual exercise rather than an actual process of turning my C320 into the lightest thing this side of the Lotus Elise.

Slow? Only time I have fun anymore are on on/off ramps and only if no other cars are in the area. I guess now we can tell the players from the fakers. Real MB owners still drive like they don't give a hoot, fake MB owners drive normal.

[QUOTE]
As for weight removal. I don't run with a spare, I don't carry lots of stuff, and I kept my stero simple. Just a small little 10 and a 4 channel amp.
[QUOTE/]

Telematics make me laugh. Between Tele-AID, Navi, Satellite Radio, iPod hookup, etc....lots of discrete IC's and interconnects are required so the components can talk to each other to give the user a seamless experience. Electronics are sensitive to environment. It's an expensive failure waiting to happen.

Ze German's design really delicate suspensions. While ze OU-TOE-bahn may feature smoothly paved roads with orderly drivers, ze American roads are much different.

Looking at the links on the front control arm suspension, the links look delicate and do not look like they could take a 40mph stroll through an old fashioned Boston pothole (crater).

Darn, so the bottom link broke away from the subframe and trespassed into the engine bay?

Sad part is BMW and MB are straying far from there roots to appeal to a generation that never grew up in a W201 and watch their parents loathe the repair costs. I don't even think they gave complementary wash & vacuums back then.

About the only thing that hasn't changed is the MB Dealer attitude. Back in the 80's, MB dealers were mostly small boutique shops that still stuck their nose up at you, charged even more outrageous prices (in real, not inflation adjusted dollars!), and you had to pop 50 cents for a soda if you were thirsty. The office chairs were a far cry from the plush leather one's they use now and they yelled at me as a kid for trying to sneek into the workshop to peek at cars being worked on.

Then Acura and Lexus came along and gave us cupholders, plush suspensions and treated us like kings.

This forced ze German's away from making cars educating consumers along the way, into creating a a whole luxury experience.

Comparitively, a 1980's W201 isn't all that luxurious. No cupholders, bolstered seats that hug the driver and wipers for the headlights!

Though the billion's spent were on the platform and the driving experience. Crap like automatic climate control was always sourced from vendors and such.


Mercedes is straying away from it's engineering prowess and entering into a game of bells an whistles.

Buellwinkle

Haha, MB = german Buick, it's a luxury car, go slow and let people enjoy watching you drive by. You want light, get a Smart car for $12K, weighs much less than your C class and has good safety ratings. Then replace the anemic motor with a motorcycle motor, preferably one from a Suzuki Hyabusa, then you can run some serious quater miles and do donuts until the tires explode.

Mu9enx

lol funniest thing i read today so far.

alpinweiss

The best way to a lighter car is to start with a lighter car from the factory; i.e. fewer heavy options. Buy a car without the following:

automatic transmission
sunroof
big engine
navigation system
C/D changer
power seats
full size spare tire

Deleting the above will save you at least 300 pounds or so. Then make sure your interior and trunk are free from clutter; especially books, papers, and liquids.

The difference in performance and mileage will surprise you, and you have not compromised the car in any way.

SeaCoupe

[QUOTE]
Exactly! Finally someone gets that this is an intellectual exercise rather than an actual process of turning my C320 into the lightest thing this side of the Lotus Elise.



Slow? Only time I have fun anymore are on on/off ramps and only if no other cars are in the area. I guess now we can tell the players from the fakers. Real MB owners still drive like they don't give a hoot, fake MB owners drive normal.

[QUOTE]

I don't quite know what you are saying in the above paragraphs. I am just like any other performance oriented enthusiast. I love my curves, and I like ' em empty. I drive my Fiat to the edge. HARD. Car runs on Yoko Advan A059 Race rubber with a treadwear of 60. I have the car balanced and do my own alignments to my taste for turn in prowess.

I love my Mercedes, love it. But, I drive that car about 60 mph, and just take it easy. Mostly if I'm driving the MBZ, it's because my precious daughter is in the back.

Someone running hard into a corner does not make them a pro driver. I do know a number of SCCA racers, some who have won National Titles. The majority don't run hard ont he roads.

The Mini Cooper's issue on the lower control arm was that the mount facing the rear of the car had some bending and a crack. The bushing was toast.

E

Rev 2 Liv

Will the tires explode before or after I rollover the car?

Rev 2 Liv

[QUOTE=emrliquidlife;2889052][QUOTE]
Exactly! Finally someone gets that this is an intellectual exercise rather than an actual process of turning my C320 into the lightest thing this side of the Lotus Elise.



Slow? Only time I have fun anymore are on on/off ramps and only if no other cars are in the area. I guess now we can tell the players from the fakers. Real MB owners still drive like they don't give a hoot, fake MB owners drive normal.

blah, sarcasm and humor often doesn't come off the same way. I'm learning how to use smilies.

I was simply poking fun at the stereotype that MB and BMW owners drive like -ssh-l-s.

Buellwinkle

Car won't roll over doing donuts, you are just spinning tires, going zero mph. Or as Homer would say, Doh!

Here's a guy that knows how make a light car lighter and then smoke some tires -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPQIizRp9ck

Defiant

Haven't any of you heard of "Road-hugging weight"?

Them light cars is suicide boxes. Used only for kamakaze pilot training.

MattRobertson

I'll bet you could trim 40 lbs off the car with some uber-light forged wheels (and buy lighter weight tires). I take it the cost of these mods is not a factor as it'd be far cheaper just to buy the extra gas.

Empty out the washer fluid reservoir. That Klingon warbird engine cover has to be worth another 10 lbs.