Weight reduction impressions:
Some of you who follow my builds know that I have owned quite a lot of cars over the years. From giant lumbering SUV's F250 service bodies, about a dozen MR2s and a few exotics. The closest comparison to my current Spyder was my 2005 Lotus Elise with the LSS package.
Now, the Spyder does not exactly get the same kind of attention as the Lotus but that's really not the point of this write up. Comparing the two cars after the modifications I have done seems very fair. Especially given the MSRP when I bought the Lotus and the addition of the Sport Suspension package.
The Elise had AO48 tires on it at the time and they were great but still technically a road tire suitable for the track on the 17” LSS wheels. The MR2 Spyder has Azinis RT660s. Kind of a track tire that is also suitable for the road on 15” RPF1s.
Road feel: The Elise was more communicative and tracked somewhat more accurately. Perhaps due to the lower profile wheel. Or, maybe due to the MR2 having a somewhat screwed up scrub radius from the extra offset I chose. Either way the Elise felt more crisp with the steering. However, that is where the benefits end. While the Lotus had a better steering feel, it also crashed over hard bumps that the MR2 shrugs off. That's not to say that the MR2 is better with road imperfections, it's just that the car does not feel like its going to be torn apart from a pot hole. Even so, the MR2 gets upset by bumps mid corner and requires steering input to hold the line where the Lotus did not.
Grip: This MR2 is in an absolute different league when compared with OEM LSS Lotus Elise! I cannot overemphasize this. With the current setup OEM base springs with KYB Black struts the car feels like it could pull your face off. I need to do some datalogs to show the lateral G's but it well exceeds 1.0G and not just for brief periods or transitions.
Acceleration: With the Lotus it was easy to fall out of lift on the 2ZZ engine. I often found myself waiting for the power to come back after a tricky corner. Those two or three seconds make a big deal when competing with higher end cars. In the MR2 the cam change does not matter, period. Sure it gives you more rev range to play with but from 3000 RPM on boost is INSTANTLY ready. If feels a bit like the REV 400 supercharger that many of the Lotus owners swear by. The MR2 just explodes out of the corner lifting the front end toward the sky as if it is searching for a bird to eat. The light weight of this MR2 does help with the chassis pitch but the power is just so huge compared to the weight that I find myself rolling onto the throttle more gradually than I would in the Lotus simply because at part throttle even below lift the Spyder is making substantially more torque than the Elise. I feel like it changes the line through the corners. Yes, it's still MR but a bit more point and shoot. I am planning my breaking much earlier because I will be to the next corner quicker and arrive at higher speed.
Braking: The weight reduction had a huge effect here. I thought I would be upgrading brakes by this point but surprisingly no. Granted most of my driving is just in the first three gears but still I have glazed brakes in similar sized cars with far less power. The brakes are currently stoptech slotted rotors with stainless lines and performance pads. Really, nothing special at this point. That may change as I now have the car near Road Atlanta for the summer (I wonder how the Miata guys would feel if I crashed their party?)
Toss-ability: The car changes direction amazingly easily. The lightness makes correcting and recovering from mistakes a breeze. Honestly, the car has a higher fun factor than the Elise primarily because of this one amazing trait. I'm tempted to do a radiator V-mount to move some mass further back and see if the responsiveness can be even further improved but fear things may become a bit twitchy.
Ride quality: The reduced weight is very apparent when riding in the car. Think of the difference in a car before and after installing coilovers. A few hundred pounds makes that much of a change. The spring rate feels higher and so does the damping since both are controlling less mass. Sure there may be some odd harmonics over some sort of bumps but I have not found any yet. I have another 50 to 100 lbs of weight I plan to remove.
TLDR: The weight reduction has made what was a fun car an absolute beast for low and medium speed tracks. In my opinion the reduced weight has made the car much more derivable. Each pound taken out of the chassis feels more and more effective. That is true since as the weight drops every pound shed is a higher percentage of the total weight. So, while it is getting harder and harder to find mass to remove without turning the car into a stripped out racing can, every ounce is more and more valuable as the work progresses.
