Chevelle Weight Reduction - Trim The Fat

When It Comes To Drag Racing, Lighter Is Always Quicker, So We Put Our Chevelle On A Diet To Trim The Fat

By Jeff Smith

Photography by Jeff Smith

We spent way too much time...

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The 11 o'clock news talks about it all the time: America is fat-overweight-rotund-and we couldn't agree more. But we're talking about carburetors and muscle cars, not carbohydrates and Lean Cuisine. Over the past few months, we've put a lot of time into our Orange Peel Chevelle, including new paint, a California Performance Transmission 200-4R overdrive, and a pavement-pounding trip between Los Angeles and Phoenix on the CC Anti-Tour. All these efforts were so successful that now we're motivated to push the orange crusher deeper into the 11s. While installing a new shifter, we uncovered a load of factory sound deadener under the carpeting. After yanking out all that sticky stuff, we were shocked to discover the nasty pile weighed 20 pounds. That got us thinking about what else we could do to lighten the car. We then discovered that the partly lightened Chevelle weighed a mere 3,221 pounds and decided right then to trim Orange Peel down to a lean and mean 2,990 pounds.

If this car were a dedicated drag race car, we'd replace all kinds of stuff with oh-too-thin race fiberglass and plastic. But the Chevelle is first a street car. Sure, we've compromised by stripping the A/C, heater, blower fan, and even the windshield wipers, but frankly, we live in Southern California and don't plan on driving the car in the rain. We've come up with what we think are some creative solutions that might give you ideas on ways to trim the fat. Keep in mind that the classic tale of 100 pounds is equal to a tenth of a second and 1 mph is still right on target. We might have gone a bit beyond practical, but you can pick and choose the ideas that best help you to lose a few pounds-and trim the e.t. at the same time.

This large Be Cool aluminum...

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CC Diet Step 1
We started off by eliminating the heavy parts like the tar paper insulation, A/C, and heater assembly. Then we got into substituting heavy with light. The trick is to do this without spending a lot of money or destroying the car's street manners. In some cases, we were successful and in other cases, the light stuff cost more than we'd anticipated. The chart shows how much initial weight we pulled out of the car. We found it easier to look for 20 places to remove 5 pounds than one place that was worth 100. We needed to trim lots of weight because we also added 100 pounds to the car with an eight-point, Art Morrison, mild steel rollbar assembly. Many of the early parts added were done several years ago, so we don't have a really accurate starting weight, but a typical all-steel '66 small-block Chevelle with A/C weighs around 3,510 pounds without a driver. We also weighed a drum-brake '67 Chevelle small-block that came in at 3,400 pounds, so there is some variation.

Weight Chart
Starting Weight: 3,510
Heavy Parts	Weight	Light Parts	Weight	Savings
Steel hood	54	Fiberglass hood	20	34
Steel front bumper	26	Fiberglass bumper	2	24
A/C equipment	80	A/C-delete fiberglass	1	79
Front bench seat	84	Two bucket seats	70	14
Rear bench seat	11	Rear seat removed	0	11
Brass copper radiator	34	Be Cool radiator	17	17
Sound deadener	20	Removed	0	20
Stock starter motor	20	GMPP light starter	9	11
Clutch fan	8	Removed	0	8
Brake booster	6	Removed	0	6
Stock radio	10	Aftermarket	2	8
Cast-iron manifolds	25	Headers	15	10
Cast-iron intake	20	Aluminum intake	4	16
15x8 steel wheels	100	Aluminum wheels	60	40
Power steering	34	Manual	13	21
Trunk mat	10	Removed	0	10
Stereo speakers	30	Removed	0	30
Spare tire	30	Removed	0	30
Weight savings				389
Weight added-AME eight-point rollbar (chrome-moly, 72 pounds)				100
Net weight savings				289
Weight with half a tank of fuel				3,221

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