This car company’s obsession with weight doesn’t end with that jack I described in the previous post.

A gram here and a gram there, and pretty soon you have … several grams.

Consider the lug bolts. The 996s had bolts with 19 mm heads, the 997’s were also 19 mm heads, but the heads were shorter by four or five mm, and this car now has 17 mm headed bolts — all these with the same thread size. A steady trimming away of what was not needed.  Because if you don’t need it, why are you carrying it around?

When you notice these things, you may start to develop a sympathetic obsession. You’ll notice if something that you’re adding to the car is made of heavier material than it needs to be. That sensibility can lead you to building things differently.

Here is a fabricated mount to hold the driver’s display for our rally computer. 

The fittings and vertical stalk are just nicely manufactured commercial products made for motorcycles. But that larger horizontal base is a small chunk of high performance aluminum tubing. 

OK to be honest, it’s a sawn-off end of a mountain bike handlebar that I’ve had my fabrication oddments bin for years. Using materials on-hand is a longstanding obsession for me. 😉  Here’s the matching piece from the other end of those handlebars (I trimmed the bars at some point to improve ergonomics).

 

Regardless of its history, that chunk of tubing is very light and very strong, and in my current weight-obsessed state, it seems the perfect thing to use.