The 350z goes on a Diet

On Saturday the 350z went on a diet, losing (rough guess here) about 3% of it’s total weight.

When I purchased the car in January of 2010 I knew a few things. The stereo in the car was aftermarket, and so were the two 10” subs in the back of the car. Beyond that I also assumed there was an amplifier somewhere powering the subs, but I wasn’t really sure what else there was.

I decided to remove the subwoofers so that I could drop some weight in the car. I liked the sound, but this car has a purpose, autocross, and the subs were not designed for that purpose.

Yesterday I found out what else was in there. There were TWO amps behind the driver’s seat in the compartment where the stock subwoofer would go on a Bose equipped 350z. They were in there mounted to a wooden structure, but ultimately just floating around in the compartment. That means they probably got a good tossing or two at the two autocrosses I went to previously.

Once I started getting the interior paneling out of the car so that I could remove the sub enclosure I located the amplifiers, and then I started to discover that all of the speakers in the car were being powered by the amps, which told me that they were not likely wired up to the stock stereo harness anymore.

I could have left the amps in and the speakers, and only removed the sub enclosure, but I decided if I was going to try to make this car competitive in BSP (hopefully ESP for 2012) I was going to have to go all in. So I pulled it all. I removed the subs, amps, speakers, and even the stereo from the dash. Fortunately for me BSP allows removal of the stereo/speakers as long as you don’t remove the OEM wiring, so I was covered there.

All in all I pulled out about 100lbs of equipment from the car. 45 for the sub+enclosure, 40 for the amps/bracket, and probably 5-6lbs of wiring (remember it wasn’t using the stock wiring, the power and grounds were 2 gauge, HUGE wires. The 4 speakers and the stereo itself easily weighing in around 10lbs, for a total of around 100lbs.

Not a bad diet for a day’s work. I’ll talk more about what I am doing for tunes in tomorrow’s blog post where I review the first autocross of 2011. For now here’s the video from the stereo removal. <div style="padding-bottom: 0px; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: none; padding-top: 0px" id="scid:5737277B-5D6D-4f48-ABFC-DD9C333F4C5D:739a7655-a90d-4d42-b929-2a56448fe3b4" class="wlWriterEditableSmartContent"><div id="64bd917b-9b78-426d-b119-19a4b59e16c1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><div><img src=”/assets/images/PublishThumbnails/Windows-Live-Writer/The-350z-goes-on-a-Diet_12F66/videoc902b241d5d3.jpg” style=”border-style: none” galleryimg=”no” onload=”var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById(‘64bd917b-9b78-426d-b119-19a4b59e16c1’); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = “<div><object width="448" height="252"><param name="movie" value="https://www.youtube.com/v/GGqoF9s0djQ?hl=en&hd=1"><\/param><embed src="https://www.youtube.com/v/GGqoF9s0djQ?hl=en&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="448" height="252"><\/embed><\/object><\/div>”;” alt=””></div></div><div style="width:448px;clear:both;font-size:.8em">350z Stereo Removal (autocross weight savings)</div></div>