GT350R weight reduction. Thoughts welcome.

PhoenixM3

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All,

Coming from a GT500, the GT350R is a much better riding car, and I’m certain it handles way better too.

I’m reluctant to change many things about the car and just enjoy it stock. However, I’m at nearly 7500ft elevation and do think I could do something to increase performance without voiding the warranty (engine). I think lower gears would help, as would shedding some weight.

I’m not considering a power adder, but may do LTH and a tune later down the road.
 

ANGREY

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1) Ditch resonators and cats. This is probably the cheapest weight reduction. The longtubes you swap out will be marginally lighter than the bulky shorties.
2) Wheels. This one is most beneficial because you're reducing unsprung weight. If you go with a quality lightweight wheel like signature, you can reduce 10+ lbs on each corner. It's an expensive reduction however.
3) Rear seat delete. Fairly inexpensive, but obviously takes away any functionality of the rear seats.
4) Carbon fiber panels/parts. Hood (off the front) fenders, panels, trunk deck etc. Also very expensive.
5) K member. Again, very expensive and not going to yield all that much weight savings. This also helps with clearance and access underneath.
6) Carbon Ceramic Brake package. Wildly expensive. Again, unsprung weight savings so lb for lb has more effect.

From there it all gets very expensive. You can redistribute the weight a bit with a battery relocation.
 

ANGREY

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If you want to change the character of the car, you can start dumping things like diff and trans cooler.
 

PhoenixM3

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Gears and e85 tuning would wake that bitch up nicely!

Youre definitely going to miss the torque blast from that tvs blower though........
Gears will probably be the first thing. The exhaust is pretty rowdy in stock form. I do hate the "artificial noise" pumped into the cabin in "normal" mode....
 

B7BlownSnake

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I haven't weighed the stock battery yet, but it's "lightweight" according to the GT350R propaganda.....
Yes, light compared to an H8 battery...

The AG lithium battery was about 8 pounds. And it held a charge much longer when I didn't drive my car for a few weeks at a time. I got a special tray to hold it, but now they make batteries in the factory size so you can use the stock hold down and tray.
 

JAJ

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The carbon ceramic brakes are one of the few straight bolt-ons that make a significant difference without any heroics. They cost about $265 per pound saved (that's 45 pounds of unsprung weight).
Fam Photo Ford GT350 OEM rotors 4 corners small 2019 04 30.jpg
Fam Photo RB CCB 4 corners small 2019 04 30.jpg
 

ANGREY

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The carbon ceramic brakes are one of the few straight bolt-ons that make a significant difference without any heroics. They cost about $265 per pound saved (that's 45 pounds of unsprung weight).
View attachment 1649125 View attachment 1649126

Awesome, is there any indication of how well they perform compared to OEM?

The new website (A Brake Solution Provider - From Street To Race Track) is awfully sparse on crucial details.

Does the compact package (18" wheels) perform the same as the OEM larger system?

It'd be a lot easier to swallow the huge cost if it's significant weight savings, they last a lot longer, they perform better, you can run smaller wheels (and cheaper tires) etc, but alas, not a lot of sales-critical information to make the jump
 

B7BlownSnake

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Awesome, is there any indication of how well they perform compared to OEM?

The new website (A Brake Solution Provider - From Street To Race Track) is awfully sparse on crucial details.

Does the compact package (18" wheels) perform the same as the OEM larger system?

It'd be a lot easier to swallow the huge cost if it's significant weight savings, they last a lot longer, they perform better, you can run smaller wheels (and cheaper tires) etc, but alas, not a lot of sales-critical information to make the jump

I've never used them personally, but I hear mixed reviews about RB from the Mercedes community. About even split love/hate.

I know Girodisc makes great 2-piece floating rotors (I have them on my E63, saved total 27lbs front, 16lbs rear) for the front of the GT350, but they don't list the weight of the new vs original. Will be a little less weight savings but only $1200 for the front set!
 

JAJ

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There are a lot of variables and I'm not the best one to explain them.

This photo of a front rotor on my car is from about a month ago - they've got 22 track days on them now:

upload_2020-6-30_9-19-37.png


Internet wisdom is that if you have good cooling the rotors will last about 4 times as long as iron.

They also seem to produce longer pad life and dust is almost non-existent. As far as braking is concerned, it's amazing.
 

ANGREY

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There are a lot of variables and I'm not the best one to explain them.

This photo of a front rotor on my car is from about a month ago - they've got 22 track days on them now:

View attachment 1649303

Internet wisdom is that if you have good cooling the rotors will last about 4 times as long as iron.

They also seem to produce longer pad life and dust is almost non-existent. As far as braking is concerned, it's amazing.

Thanks,

So when you say amazing. Is it better initial stopping power? Better fade resistance? Both?

And it looks from the photo's that you went with the 18" compatible version (maybe I'm wrong). Is it safe to say that the smaller version is just as capable as the 15.5" OEM steel versions?

I'm rolling around the idea of doing this conversion, but it's a LOT of duckets.
 

JAJ

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They're full-sized 394x36 rotors. The 380's require either machining the knuckle to use the OEM caliper or it requires a switch to RB calipers. I have no reason to believe that the 380's wouldn't work fine, but check with RB to see what they say. I believe that the RB caliper/380 rotor option was developed as a full-race application, but you'd best confirm that with them.

What I really like about the brake performance is that it's consistent from cold to hot and fade-free. The latter depends on the pads, of course. RB has a "streetable" sintered metal pad that has really high bite and is absolutely unfadeable. I love the braking but the pads get a bit noisy after a couple of days on the street, so I normally run with Pagid RSL29's (that Pagid says are good for carbon ceramic brakes). They have less bite than the sintered pads, but otherwise a flat curve and they're an install-and-forget option - good for street or track. And, as I said earlier, pad wear is surprisingly low. The ceramic rotor is super-hard, like a dinner plate, and it wears extremely slowly (as you can see in the picture) with the side-effect of not grinding the pad material down very fast either.
 

sonicx

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Make sure you don’t have liberal ford dealership, I know of several where they take pleasure & a lot of effort to be able to trace back mods to areas that it “might” over lap and say void.
 

13COBRA

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Make sure you don’t have liberal ford dealership, I know of several where they take pleasure & a lot of effort to be able to trace back mods to areas that it “might” over lap and say void.

That's never made sense to me.

If you do that, you piss off the customer, you don't get the service work, and then the customer bad mouths you.

If you make it work, customer is happy, Ford pays you, and the customer tells his friends you help.
 

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