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Spanner,
You are quite correct. Removing weight can & should
- Improve acceleration and braking (with less mass to accelerate)
- Improve cornering (less mass to roll = less suspension movement = wheel closer to optimum position for more of the time)
However you do risk upsetting the balance of the car. If as you suggest you stripped 100kg, almost entirely off the rear axle, you would find:
- First, the back end will sit much higher (coz there's less weight on it). Suspension geometry has changed, roll centres are different, CoG is different, and there's a good chance your camber setting has changed.
- Second, your spring rates are too high (what matters is not the spring stiffness, but the natural frequency, which depends on the square root of spring stiffness/sprung mass).
- Damper and roll bar stiffness may also need reducing.
Then of course, you are assuming that the starting point was already optimum design. It's all a bit of a circular argument. Remember that the enginerrs built the original car to give the best compromise between one occupant on a perfectly smooth road through to 5 occupants on cobbles (and everything in between). Making a big change in weight could actually improve the handling, or make it more oversteery than a 911 on a diesel spill. If you make a permanent change to the weight, all you can do is accept that yu may have to make suspension changes, and they might range from fitting adjustable shocks to a full respec.
And as Adam says, the odds are that stripping weight will benefit overall, on a typical road car conversion.
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