Quote:
Originally Posted by GregS
Details on getting down to 285?
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Most of it is cutting extraneous frame tabs off, cutting off the passenger part of the subframe. Race wiring harness, cut the dash apart and only using the tach, lightweight lithium-iron battery, removing the keyswitch and wiring directly to the killswitch, removing the mounting points for the keyswitch from the upper triple, oh, and the bracket for the seat: It's pretty heavy, so I removed it, cut off the ends that the seat hooks into, and bolted them back on. Aluminum captive spacers for the wheels, gas tank filler neck removed for dry break valve, aluminum bars, aluminum dogbones, airbox removed, rear inner fender removed and replaced with .020 carbon fiber sheet, Area P full exhaust, fork "brace" removed, rear brake reservoir removed, non-functional bodywork panels removed, exhaust mount bracket lightened (only the metal around the mount holes remains. I not only cut off the kickstand bracket, I also ground down much of the quarter inch thick area where it was welded on the frame.
Even the multi-adjustable rearsets didn't survive the diet unscathed. I located them where I wanted them and then made new locating subplates without all the extra holes and material.
Basically, much of the weight savings will come from buying yourself a six pack of cutoff wheels and going to town!
I've done all this while keeping reliability as the most important objective. We are doing 3 hour endurance races and can't really afford to spend much time in the pits fixing stuff and we've been pretty reliable. The only real mechanical issue we've had so far this year was due to me using bad gas. There are some things I would do if I were sprint racing the bike to make it even lighter (like removing the starter), going total-loss with the ignition and going to a smaller and lighter gas tank.