The Pursuit of Performance - Part 1

Tuners out there are in an eternal pursuit of performance! So many elements, big and tiny, affect an automobile's capacity to accelerate faster, run further and be more efficient. So let's take a look at what affects the car's power and it's ability to use it!

An automobile is like a heavy carriage that's is drawn (FWD), pushed (RWD) or both drawn and pushed (4WD/AWD) by the motor through the drivetrain. To make it go faster you can reduce the carriage's weight so that the motor can be more effective or you can improve the motor so that it can better move the weight.

So how can we trim the fats of our cars to help out the motor? The cheap way is to ditch stuff. Removing components that's not needed for the specific applications (e.g. off road racing) is common. This includes:

• Stereo
• Air-conditioning
• Carpeting
• Trim
• Spare tire / tools

But thinking about the Yin and Yang, ditching structural components will have negatively interesting effects on your car's harmony so the usual method to compensate is through substitution.

A lot of factory parts are made with mass produced and possibly heavier materials because they are more cost effective. Heavy equipment can be substituted with lighter equipment that perform the same function. This includes but is not limited to:

• Light weight hoods
• Light weight body kits
• Light weight seats
• Light weight engine parts
• Light weight chassis parts

The BRIDE Stradia II only weighs 12kg. It also performs better at keeping the driver in well, the driver's seat.

via BRIDE

But again, consider the Yin and Yang. From substitution and removal of equipment, the car maybe lighter, but this may affect the weight distribution and hence its handling. For normal daily street use this may not affect the car's performance that much, but for performance, you'll want to maintain a balanced model, dependent on your car's natural and target Weight Distribution.

To add to that, what about structural integrity? The tuner needs to consider the composition and strength of the replacement part to ensure that it performs as well or exceeds the structural performance of the existing heavier component.

Okay!

So how can we improve the motor so that it can better move the weight? Let's take a look at this in Part 2!