Scorpiacaro# 209, weight...

[Rupunzell]

Out of curiosity, put# 209 in the corner scales today.. 2021 pounds as is without the cylinder head on the Lampredi TC. No AC, no USA bumpers, head light motors and many other 1970's era mandated items. Think the weight can be kept at about this or lower if a few more unnecessary items are removed.

Bernice

 

[mikeroten]

ah, if only...

 

[BEEK]

I am trying to get my silver one down to 1800lbs. Wish me luck! Also looks like we need to work on the corner weights abit LOL

 

[davidb]

I wonder what the weight would be if one installed: TMH fiberglass fenders.
A TMH fiberglass hood & fiberglass door skins. Has to be a lot lighter.
And, AND how it would effect weight distribution and overall handling?

 

[Rupunzell]

I wonder what the weight would be if one installed: TMH fiberglass fenders.
A TMH fiberglass hood & fiberglass door skins. Has to be a lot lighter.
And, AND how it would effect weight distribution and overall handling?

Lower weight improves every aspect of performance including lower stress on the tires and related.
Weight distribution can be adjusted as needed by adding or moving weighty bits.

"Simplify, then add lightness”
~Colin Chapman.

This is absolute counter to many of the modern day two seaters and more where "two seat sports cars" are almost always over and well over 3,000 pounds with a huge motor & power & overly power assisted brakes, this is what the market demands. Other aspects such as chassis dynamics, agility, and direct connecting the driver to the moto (lack of power assisted steering, brakes, and all that).


Bernice

 

[Rupunzell]

I am trying to get my silver one down to 1800lbs. Wish me luck! Also looks like we need to work on the corner weights abit LOL

Yea, the corner weights are wonky (easy enough to fix).. more important at this point to get# 209 "self motivating" again..

Bernice

 

[NigelProdrive]

I wonder what the weight would be if one installed: TMH fiberglass fenders.
A TMH fiberglass hood & fiberglass door skins. Has to be a lot lighter.
And, AND how it would effect weight distribution and overall handling?

My yellow 77 was pretty gutted with racing seats and fiberglass hood and decklid. Volumex supercharged.

Lightening the car everywhere isn't going to effect weight distribution like relocating weight like fuel and battery.

 

[NigelProdrive]

Out of curiosity, put# 209 in the corner scales today.. 2021 pounds as is without the cylinder head on the Lampredi TC. No AC, no USA bumpers, head light motors and many other 1970's era mandated items. Think the weight can be kept at about this or lower if a few more unnecessary items are removed.

Manual windows?
Lightweight high torque starter?
Aluminum oil filter housing?
Aluminum radiator?
Both exhaust box heatshields?
Wire harness overhaul?

 

[davidb]

Nigel makes a good point. All the “little” things he mentioned really add up
weight-wise. EX: when I installed my aluminum oil filter mount I sawed off
a big portion of the A/C compressor/alternator steel mounting bracket.
That remnant was HEAVY. Many ways to lighten these cars . . .

 

[Rupunzell]

Manual windows?

~Yes, and they were rusted almost frozen as delivered from storage. Lots of penetration oil and slowly working the "spring" got them working again. Now well oiled and runs up/down good.

Lightweight high torque starter?

~Not yet.

Aluminum oil filter housing?

~Yes, from EFI 124 spider. Greatly smaller and lower weight. Plan is to change the Bosch alternator to a modern mini Denso further reducing weight. Might do a serpentine belt drive instead of Vee belt drive.

Aluminum radiator?

~No, rebuilt over-sized core oem.. from the LeMons car, which got a different radiator.

Both exhaust box heatshields?

~Yes, these are no longer needed, more dead weight removed.

Wire harness overhaul?

~To be did, once the power train is out, there is a lot of prep of the engine compartment to be done from ripping out all that un-used wiring, brake boosters and related tubing (think 14ft or more) and anything else not needed.

There will be a set of SST coolant pipes (thinner gauge) to go in, think these are slightly less weight than the steel pipes.

No longer used AC stuff needs to come out.

Remarkable how much "stuff" was stuffed into the Scorpion.


Bernice

 

[Rupunzell]

My yellow 77 was pretty gutted with racing seats and fiberglass hood and decklid. Volumex supercharged.


View attachment 90078

Lightening the car everywhere isn't going to effect weight distribution like relocating weight like fuel and battery.

Curious, what happened to the yellow car?


Bernice

 

[mikeroten]

~Yes, and they were rusted almost frozen as delivered from storage. Lots of penetration oil and slowly working the "spring" got them working again. Now well oiled and runs up/down good.

~Not yet.

~Yes, from EFI 124 spider. Greatly smaller and lower weight. Plan is to change the Bosch alternator to a modern mini Denso further reducing weight. Might do a serpentine belt drive instead of Vee belt drive.


~No, rebuilt over-sized core oem.. from the LeMons car, which got a different radiator.

~Yes, these are no longer needed, more dead weight removed.

~To be did, once the power train is out, there is a lot of prep of the engine compartment to be done from ripping out all that un-used wiring, brake boosters and related tubing (think 14ft or more) and anything else not needed.

There will be a set of SST coolant pipes (thinner gauge) to go in, think these are slightly less weight than the steel pipes.

No longer used AC stuff needs to come out.

Remarkable how much "stuff" was stuffed into the Scorpion.


Bernice

the silent hero here is all the wiring for emissions equipment. AC stuff is a no brainer. I'm personally boggled at how much unneeded wiring is in my car.

 

[NigelProdrive]

Curious, what happened to the yellow car?Bernice

It changed owners several times. Was being stored in a shop in SE US which got flooded. Person who owns/owned it after that was on the Lancia Scorpion Facebook group. Haven’t heard a peep in long time.

Told this story many times. Was driving it with my late father-in-law riding shotgun going to rally happy hour when I asked him if I could date his daughter. He blew a gasket.

 

[NigelProdrive]

the silent hero here is all the wiring for emissions equipment. AC stuff is a no brainer. I'm personally boggled at how much unneeded wiring is in my car.

8 miles of unnecessary wire.

You have to remove all the electrical tape everywhere. Make a huge copy of the wiring diagram to white out the unnecessary wires as you remove from the gizmo back to the fuse box. You are going to be in the driver’s footwell for hours.

I swapped my electric windows for lighter manual regulators.

Relocate the wire loom in the engine compartment down on the crossmember instead of firewall bulkhead to hide and shorten them since most the remaining electrical components are lower.

Quality aftermarket gauges are worthy addition. Then tape them all up and add wiring loom.

 

[mikeroten]

the part of this I want to tackle first is the bullshit warning lights in the driver's footwell

 

[NigelProdrive]

The red one I ditched the HVAC box under the dash. Not going to be driving in freezing weather so just use antifog on the windshield instead of having defroster if it’s ever that humid in rare instance when driving it.

So much easier under dash. Replacing master cylinders no longer a total bitch without it in the way. Can reach items behind dash through the upper air intake on cowl without it going into the box. 4 miles of wiring and 1 mile of vacuum hoses removed by ditching AC and heat. The HVAC box is pretty heavy alone but add weight of valves, 10 feet or so of heater hose and core filled with heavy coolant, ....

The steel lip bar for front of targa roof is several pounds as it the steel roof bow whereas the full coverage fiberglass double bubble weighs little.

Factory seats are heavier than they look. Anyone who has one out please weigh and let us know how much they weigh including the broken adjustment rods.

Cut out all the bogus brackets in the engine compartment.

Ditch the air pump studs in transmission.

Ditch the engine compartment and trunk lights. We have IPhones. Press the button and say “flashlight on” and bam, you got light.

Ditch the cast iron wheel spacers and if you need spacers replace with aluminum spacers.

Fixed headlights to ditch headlight motor and linkage rod.

 

[carl]

I got my X down to about 1800 pounds. I totally gutted the interior, including the dashboard. I made my own wiring harness which was very minimal as I had deleted the headlights and all the associated hardware, Only had one wiper, the driver's and originally not even that one. The car was only driven on sunny days and not at night. Once you figure out what kind of driving you plan to do and what silliness you are willing to get away with on antique plates (no inspection in Virginia) the sky is the limit. No carpets or any sound deadening and thin aluminum panels as door panels. I even thought of removing my door windows but I wanted to be able to drive the car all year round.

I am not real familiar with the Scorpion but the same mind set applies.

 

[NigelProdrive]

The thing with the Scorpion is the insane amount of engineering of and to include additional parts cost and labor to install them to comply with federal regulations that no wonder they were so damn expensive new.

 

[Rupunzell]

The red one I ditched the HVAC box under the dash. Not going to be driving in freezing weather so just use antifog on the windshield instead of having defroster if it’s ever that humid in rare instance when driving it.

So much easier under dash. Replacing master cylinders no longer a total bitch without it in the way. Can reach items behind dash through the upper air intake on cowl without it going into the box. 4 miles of wiring and 1 mile of vacuum hoses removed by ditching AC and heat. The HVAC box is pretty heavy alone but add weight of valves, 10 feet or so of heater hose and core filled with heavy coolant, ....

The steel lip bar for front of targa roof is several pounds as it the steel roof bow whereas the full coverage fiberglass double bubble weighs little.

Factory seats are heavier than they look. Anyone who has one out please weigh and let us know how much they weigh including the broken adjustment rods.

Cut out all the bogus brackets in the engine compartment.

Ditch the air pump studs in transmission.

Ditch the engine compartment and trunk lights. We have IPhones. Press the button and say “flashlight on” and bam, you got light.

Ditch the cast iron wheel spacers and if you need spacers replace with aluminum spacers.

Fixed headlights to ditch headlight motor and linkage rod.

Good list, thanks for posting..

Bernice

 

[Rupunzell]

The thing with the Scorpion is the insane amount of engineering of and to include additional parts cost and labor to install them to comply with federal regulations that no wonder they were so damn expensive new.

Dug into the interior yesterday, pulled out the absolutely icky carpet from ????.. What was revealed is the amount of "add ons" that were installed to "make" this Lancia "marketable" for the USA market.. No idea where these ideas for add ons came from, reality is they are ALL an absolute disaster and IMO vast contributor to why the Scorpion failure in the USA market was so epic. This was near identical to what happened when Malcolm Bricklin got involved with Bertone about 1984 after Fiat exited the USA car market with a "upmarket" version of the exxe. Remember driving the 81' daily driver to a Bertone dealer to have a look-see.. to discover the horridly excessive add-ons that were applied to the exxe..
Knew instantly this was doomed for failure.

Truly sad to see what the marketing folks did to both of these design and engineering excellent offerings. In both the exxe and Scorpiacarlo the market_eers totally missed what should have been offered.. a simplified and honest to their original design products extracting what dynamic performance IS possible from both of these designs.. Knowing the Fiat internal politics back then, the "powers to be" would never allow Fiat/Bertone or Lancia/Pininfarina to produce a moto with equal to higher performance than their halo brand "Ferrari".. Both the exxe & Scorpiacarlo were forced to be relegated to be lesser and never allowed to be all they can in production (037 was the exception)..


Bernice