318ti.org forum - View Single Post - Official E36 318ti Weight Reduction Thread

mobius · 09-06-2016, 07:53 PM

Old thread but I've been giving this some serious thought lately for a recently acquired TI that could be an all out track car at some point. Here goes my line of thought:

I'm thinking of building up the performance through NA methods. There's a very good ITB kit now available for m42/m44s through Racehead Engineering in Australia. There's a very long m42/m44 forum site thread on the package and it's shown to give slight increase when just bolted on let alone with the proper combination of engine work. I realize though this will hit a certain end point after applying the RHD kit, more aggressive cams, better flowing exhaust, tuned setup, and a few other things. So here's the second line of thought.

How about going for broke on the weight savings without really having much of a budget? This should help alot combined with the NA stuff mentioned above. I'm thinking about all of the weight savings above plus a few spins of my own. For the battery I'd go with a capacitor based pack. There's a guy on youtube showing the build and performance of a super capacitor based battery system. In this case I think it would be more than adequate and would be lighter than an agm. Another thought is to replace the rear hatch with the one and only produced carbon fiber one. There's about 20 plus pounds in weight savings there if I recall. Then cf fender replacements, cf hood, and any body kit stuff as light weight as possible. Throw on some very light wheels as well. A friend of mine is a highly skilled fabricator and does stuff with Titanium these days for the aerospace industry. I've talked with him about getting a ti exhaust fabricated from Titanium. Not at all cheap but weight savings there too and I did mention above an all out weight savings without cost type of deal. The only thing I can think of next would be to cut out a significant portion of the roof skin and replace that with a custom made sheet of cf. Of course gutting the interior would be there too. I'm thinking all of this together could probably put the TI sub 1800lbs at least.

It would be costly but certainly a different approach than anyone has ever done versus the m5x / s5x swaps and not worry about the weight.

09-06-2016, 07:53 PM	#14
mobius Member Join Date: Jan 2015 Location: Maine Posts: 55 iTrader: (0) Photo Gallery	Old thread but I've been giving this some serious thought lately for a recently acquired TI that could be an all out track car at some point. Here goes my line of thought: I'm thinking of building up the performance through NA methods. There's a very good ITB kit now available for m42/m44s through Racehead Engineering in Australia. There's a very long m42/m44 forum site thread on the package and it's shown to give slight increase when just bolted on let alone with the proper combination of engine work. I realize though this will hit a certain end point after applying the RHD kit, more aggressive cams, better flowing exhaust, tuned setup, and a few other things. So here's the second line of thought. How about going for broke on the weight savings without really having much of a budget? This should help alot combined with the NA stuff mentioned above. I'm thinking about all of the weight savings above plus a few spins of my own. For the battery I'd go with a capacitor based pack. There's a guy on youtube showing the build and performance of a super capacitor based battery system. In this case I think it would be more than adequate and would be lighter than an agm. Another thought is to replace the rear hatch with the one and only produced carbon fiber one. There's about 20 plus pounds in weight savings there if I recall. Then cf fender replacements, cf hood, and any body kit stuff as light weight as possible. Throw on some very light wheels as well. A friend of mine is a highly skilled fabricator and does stuff with Titanium these days for the aerospace industry. I've talked with him about getting a ti exhaust fabricated from Titanium. Not at all cheap but weight savings there too and I did mention above an all out weight savings without cost type of deal. The only thing I can think of next would be to cut out a significant portion of the roof skin and replace that with a custom made sheet of cf. Of course gutting the interior would be there too. I'm thinking all of this together could probably put the TI sub 1800lbs at least. It would be costly but certainly a different approach than anyone has ever done versus the m5x / s5x swaps and not worry about the weight.