Aluminum (or other alloy) suspension pcs

[Kimyee Lai]

Want to do a group buy?

[KevinBuckham]

If you are serious about saving weight, rip out the following:

- power steering
- A/C
- stock seats (replace with fixed race seats)
- sound deadening
- rear seats / interior
- emissions equipment

Get some front and rear lower 1G subframes that a few of the fast drag DSMs run.  It save a fair bit of weight.  

I don't think you are going to save much off of our suspension over stock.  Nothing notable without spending far too much money.

[Mike Schmid]

You can't say "go fast with class" when you do that though.  Plus none of that saves unsprung weight.  

But I agree you won't save much unsprung weight without spending big bucks.  Hopefully eventually companies like Hotchkis will step up to the plate and fab up all new suspensions for the 1Gs like they do for the muscle cars now.

[KevinBuckham]

Yeah I missed the "unsprung" bit.

However I think the rims, tires, and calipers have a much larger bang for the buck.  I think they should have more relative motion. (Center of mass of those bits more more than the center of mass for most of the other bits.)  In addition they (at least mine) weigh a lot more.

What scares me about aluminum and other bits is the chances of them having brittle fracture failure modes.  The stock components are really soft and are far more likely to bend than break or shatter.  With chromoly (4340), or 6061-T6 and 7075-T6 Al you are much more likely to snap or crack them.  (Although there are worse material choices.)

I've seen Talons that have been hit in the rear and the rear control arms are bent about 90 degrees.  In those situations they are likely to retain dangerous flying objects (like rims etc) and not become dangerous flying objects as well.  Many deaths in race cars have been attributed to brittle fracture suspension components that go flying through the cockpit.

That said, I am still looking at doing my upper control arms.