Does a weight reduction pass hold the same value as full weight?

[TulsaMike4]

So as many know, I’ve done all my passes “full weight”, or in my case, with extra weight added. There really isn’t a particular reason why I do it, other than maybe I’m just too lazy to pull stuff out for a night of passes, then have to reinstall it, or maybe I’m just not that concerned with “temporary” faster passes. I figured I’d get the input of others on here to possibly sway me into doing it before the weather gets too nasty, pending I’m in town and the track is open (I’ve been traveling a ton the past few months and into next year).

My personal view is if you’re pulling weight out to make a pass, then put the weight back in, is your car really capable of that time anymore since it’s back at full weight? Obviously this doesn’t apply to dedicated track cars, or people who choose to leave the weight out, as that weight is your new “normal weight. What I mean by this, is if I take out 200 lbs, run a 9.9, then put the weight back in, do I really have a car capable of 9.9 anymore? Or is it just a 10.2 car that made a pass once, and can’t do it again without removing the weight?

If enough people only care about a bottom line pass, regardless of weight, I will probably bite the bullet and join the ranks of stripped down cars with fast numbers, but if there is enough support for fat cars with heavy passengers, I will keep pursuing my goal in the current weight :)

[awdconnor]

Results are results id say, but full weight numbers are more realistic to flaunt as your average Joe who wants a fun daily isn't gonna take out all the stuff to achieve 9s/10s.

However, if your purpose is to make a drag car, then yea quickest pass no matter what is all that matters.

[angrycatmeow]

I mean, I'm stupid short. Like below 5'6". I weigh less than 140lbs. If I were to drive your car and run a 9.9, you would still have a car capable of a 9.9 whether or not it can run a 9.9 with you in it.

When you're talking about manufacturers or tuners competing for bragging rights, comparing one tuners stripped down car vs. another competitors full weight car is unfair. But for your own personal ride? If you strip everything out but the wheel and the seat and run a time, but you put everything back so you can have a car again, personally I'd go with the stripped out time as the best the car is capable of.

Sent from my Samsung smart air fryer

[TulsaMike4]

Results are results id say, but full weight numbers are more realistic to flaunt as your average Joe who wants a fun daily isn't gonna take out all the stuff to achieve 9s/10s.

However, if your purpose is to make a drag car, then yea quickest pass no matter what is all that matters.

I feel like the average joes these days only focus on numbers, and most assume whatever the quickest time on the board happens to be, is what all vehicles of that make are automatically capable of. I can’t tell you how many “g80 m cars run 9s with bolt ons and kill Audis” threads I’ve seen, or even when I was stage 2, being called slow because I couldn’t run low 11s (epl tune). The days of educated car enthusiasts who understand weight, density altitude, etc are gone, and it seems like the best number wins regardless of anything else… hence wondering if I should just suck it up and take the plunge.

[TulsaMike4]

I mean, I'm stupid short. Like below 5'6". I weigh less than 140lbs. If I were to drive your car and run a 9.9, you would still have a car capable of a 9.9 whether or not it can run a 9.9 with you in it.

When you're talking about manufacturers or tuners competing for bragging rights, comparing one tuners stripped down car vs. another competitors full weight car is unfair. But for your own personal ride? If you strip everything out but the wheel and the seat and run a time, but you put everything back so you can have a car again, personally I'd go with the stripped out time as the best the car is capable of.

Sent from my Samsung smart air fryer

Unless a guy who did run a 9 called you out when you were full weight 😂 might have to get real quick at weight reduction to back up the claims. Unfortunately I don’t think anyone has done a comparison with weight reduction vs full weight, so maybe that’s something for me to do for fun, and gradually pull more weight out. My car is stupid consistent, often with exact times to the hundredth back to back, so there’s that.

[awdconnor]

I feel like the average joes these days only focus on numbers, and most assume whatever the quickest time on the board happens to be, is what all vehicles of that make are automatically capable of. I can’t tell you how many “g80 m cars run 9s with bolt ons and kill Audis” threads I’ve seen, or even when I was stage 2, being called slow because I couldn’t run low 11s (epl tune). The days of educated car enthusiasts who understand weight, density altitude, etc are gone, and it seems like the best number wins regardless of anything else… hence wondering if I should just suck it up and take the plunge.

Thanks to social media, people only buy cars based on how fast they CAN go, instead of what they offer. I understand you're after numbers in this circumstance, but with that mindset you just end up not being happy with what you have.

[TulsaMike4]

Thanks to social media, people only buy cars based on how fast they CAN go, instead of what they offer. I understand you're after numbers in this circumstance, but with that mindset you just end up not being happy with what you have.

I bought this car to be a reliable daily driver I wasn’t going to touch since it already had an apr tune on it… that lasted 3 weeks 😂

[awdconnor]

I bought this car to be a reliable daily driver I wasn’t going to touch since it already had an apr tune on it… that lasted 3 weeks 😂

Yeaaaaa the internet is one hell of a drug hahah. I said the same thing. Then 034 dropped their tune a month after I got the car....

[AldermanToffee]

No, wouldn’t say so.

If I run a 9.9 with a different turbo, but then swap back to a smaller one and only run a 10.2 I can’t claim it’s a 9.9s car any more, the setup is different.

Same goes for weight. Driver’s weight aside, you’re modifying the car to take weight out.

I’ve got some weight taken out of my car (slightly lighter wheels, no rear seats) but I’m pretty sure my car is quite a bit heavier than stock from my meth setup, seat delete kit, turbo and manifolds (they are HEAVY compared to stock turbo).

Not to mention it’ll be even heavier with the new engine, manifolds, fuel rails, aluminium charge pipes, etc.

Obviously if we’re only talking about 30-40lbs then it’s a marginal difference and that will probably be the average weight difference between most drivers alone, but when you start stripping shit out, lightweight battery, tiny wheels with tiny brakes.. yea

There’s a car in China that has run a 9s pass, quicker than the current record. It had no doors on it though.. does that still count?

[Smac770]

There's "what it can do", then there's "what it'll do at any given moment". I think most would say "what it can do" is what's worth comparing, because that's where the fun work is. You know at least the EV crowd don't want to go the "what it'll do at any given moment" route. But that's true of hard core draggers too, "wait, I need to ice the engine for 15 minutes then we can go again". Still, no one cares what it does without the 15 minute ice soak. They want to see what it can do that one time.

[rjpalaypay]

i dont mind and am just as impressed when street legal cars put up good numbers when stripped of a couple hundred pounds even if they put the weight right back for daily driving. The personal best timeslip to me really just accomplishes making you feel good about your investment in the car & go fast parts, giving you some bragging rights, etc. When you pull up and run somebody in the wild, you wont be cruising around with engine somewhat cold, super low DA, tire pressures where they need to be, sticky surface, half tank of "the good stuff", perfect timing on your launch from a dig / roll, etc...so that full weight personal best time wouldnt be achieved either with the car at that point. Just my .02

[2010redcamaro]

I personally believe it comes down to the platform. A gutted Honda at the track makes sense to me, a gutted s4 doesn't. I think the b9 platform is perfect in the low to mid 10 second range.

[flee]

I’d rather have the fast full weight car. Or at the very minimum lighter hood and trunk? But interior has to stay.
As if I’m gutting this car I think I’d rather buy an older domestic and build big hp. 😏

[TulsaMike4]

I’d rather have the fast full weight car. Or at the very minimum lighter hood and trunk? But interior has to stay.
As if I’m gutting this car I think I’d rather buy an older domestic and build big hp. 😏

im sadly leaning the same way... build a race car, DD the S4. I just dumped a bunch into maintenance and such so probably just going to keep it a while. What's sad is any "race car" is going to start a lot slower than my DD and require some serious coin to beat it. Even my 800 rwhp Cobra only went 10.0@142, although that wasn't gutted, and I had to add weight considering the cage and such.

[mtwallace85]

To me it’s entertaining to see what a car can do when people strip every ounce possible off of it. But it’s just entertainment, that’s it, so I’m glad there’s people out there that enjoy doing that because I don’t really care that much in the end. But there are a surprising amount of people that do it with the RS3/TTRS platforms and I imagine other Audi platforms too.

I personally want to know what MY car can do at any given time because that’s what matters to me, makes driving more fun, and gives me a realistic benchmark for the performance I should be expecting when I have x, y, and z mods. For me the weight reduction ends with forged wheels, tires, carbon ceramic brakes, carbon fiber seats, titanium exhaust, rear seat delete, and braille battery. With that I can achieve about 340lbs of savings from my TTRS but it comes with a pretty large price tag.

[TulsaMike4]

To me it’s entertaining to see what a car can do when people strip every ounce possible off of it. But it’s just entertainment, that’s it, so I’m glad there’s people out there that enjoy doing that because I don’t really care that much in the end. But there are a surprising amount of people that do it with the RS3/TTRS platforms and I imagine other Audi platforms too.

I personally want to know what MY car can do at any given time because that’s what matters to me, makes driving more fun, and gives me a realistic benchmark for the performance I should be expecting when I have x, y, and z mods. For me the weight reduction ends with forged wheels, tires, carbon ceramic brakes, carbon fiber seats, titanium exhaust, rear seat delete, and braille battery. With that I can achieve about 340lbs of savings from my TTRS but it comes with a pretty large price tag.

I was actually pretty sad when my ECS exhaust added weight… I had no idea how light the factory exhaust was! I actually looked at corbeau and sparco seats as well (did them in my cobra because those weighed a ton too), but the stock seats are so comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. Maybe they can add a verified weight section to the leaderboard and people can go weigh their cars… that would be more accurate than just logging weight reduction since of the few other b9s I’ve seen on scales, there was a 50-100 lb variance that I have to imagine was due to different intercoolers, exhaust mods (and deletes), etc.

[mtwallace85]

I was actually pretty sad when my ECS exhaust added weight… I had no idea how light the factory exhaust was! I actually looked at corbeau and sparco seats as well (did them in my cobra because those weighed a ton too), but the stock seats are so comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. Maybe they can add a verified weight section to the leaderboard and people can go weigh their cars… that would be more accurate than just logging weight reduction since of the few other b9s I’ve seen on scales, there was a 50-100 lb variance that I have to imagine was due to different intercoolers, exhaust mods (and deletes), etc.

Yeah it’s amazing how much weight you can add with basic mods especially an intercooler or exhaust.

I’m looking at doing Tillett B9 seats which would give me around 50lbs savings per seat. My seats are one of my favorite features of the car but luckily it’s an easy swap from what I can tell and I would keep my original seats.

[FromS60toB61.8t]

Really boils down to what the end-goal you're trying to achieve is. If you're trying to get the lowest number possible, then strip it and run it. I personally couldn't care less about 1/4 time other than to get a baseline for myself. I don't do any dig racing, usually just rolls or highway pulls against random people that want to go at it.

For me personally, I respect a cars number more if it's still practical and daily drivable and able to do that speed. I would even put slicks into the same category as weight reduction. Why do one and not the other imo, if speed is the goal.

[TulsaMike4]

Really boils down to what the end-goal you're trying to achieve is. If you're trying to get the lowest number possible, then strip it and run it. I personally couldn't care less about 1/4 time other than to get a baseline for myself. I don't do any dig racing, usually just rolls or highway pulls against random people that want to go at it.

For me personally, I respect a cars number more if it's still practical and daily drivable and able to do that speed. I would even put slicks into the same category as weight reduction. Why do one and not the other imo, if speed is the goal.

My purpose with slicks was actually a larger sidewall and softer compound so I didn’t break axles… ironically I broke one anyway, but at least not due to wheel hop 😂

[Requiescat]

You could say that removing stuff to make your car faster doesn't hold the same ... weight

[Rob01S4]

I think you just say it’s a 9 sec card with weight reduction or “track prepped”.

There are street cars out there with sick ETs but that’s on drag radials or slicks.. they don’t drive around on that but the car itself is capable under the right prep.

[TulsaMike4]

I think you just say it’s a 9 sec card with weight reduction or “track prepped”.

There are street cars out there with sick ETs but that’s on drag radials or slicks.. they don’t drive around on that but the car itself is capable under the right prep.

I can go 10.50 on pilot sports, or 10.2 on Hoosiers :) nothing else on the car changes, so I guess that makes it easy.