The Great Pumpkin - '71 Duster

So one of the major aspects of my buildup here was to remove weight from the car. I think I covered it previously in several posts but I will reiterate that I did a lot of work in this regard, trying to replace heavy parts with lighter pieces wherever possible.

Many OE and/or heavy steel parts got replaced with lighter aluminum pieces; the radiator, front bumper brackets, trans cooler lines, calipers, master cylinder, front seat brackets, differential center section and a few other odds and ends.

A bunch of other porky stuff got the heave ho as well - the bench seat was replaced with fixed, lightweight buckets from a Jeep, the extra parts for the column shift, the radio and speaker, the entire heater box and defroster, the Super Stock springs and snubber were replaced with Caltracs and split monos, plus all the extra wiring that led to nothing or was coiled up under the dash.

So after all that, I finally weighed the car today. There's a scrap metal place down the street from my house with a drive-on scale. I figure it has to has to be pretty accurate since there is money involved but in any event, I was pleasantly surprised at the weight - 3, 060! I weigh 180 so that's 3,240 with me in it. It was weighed with a full tank of gas which is around 60-70 lbs. so with half a tank it should be around 3,000. I'm pretty happy with that. I didn't think it was going to be under 3,100.

Obviously less weight means its easier for the car to overcome inertia and accelerate quicker. I mean, duhh. But its also easier on other parts including the engine that has to work less to do the same job. So all in all, I'm pretty stoked about the number.

More to come.