Weighty subjects. FF03 parts.

To make this post make sense, we need to talk about USGT racing.  Lets start here: http://www.usvintagetransam.com/rules/USGTClassRules7-20-2017.pdf  The important bit of that PDF is the following quote:

Weight Specification: 4wd Minimum 1380g in race-ready trim Fwd no minimum weight

No.  Minimum.  Weight.  

Oh boy!  new parts.  A big pile of carbon reinforced parts.

So the FF03 chassis is soft, and flexy.  The springs are to hard.  And really, I was very displeased with my FF03 as it came out of the box.  $40 later, I had ordered all of the carbon or at least "hard" parts.  Most of them Tamiya claimed they were lighter.  I... well, mostly they weren't.   

Here's the evidence.

First, starting weight: 

The gearbox bridge:  3.5g  No savings.

Front suspension bridge: 2.2g savings

Main chassis: 5g savings

Moto brace: Gain .1g

Front bumper mount: 0.2 gram gain

Shock Pivot Top: 0.2g loss

Rear suspension pad: 0.6 gram gain

Rear suspension brace: 0.7g loss (times two..)

Rear suspension tower: 0.2 gram gain

Rear shock tower: 0.3 gram gain

And in the end, we have this:

Something like a 9 gram weight savings.  That... was not worth the effort.  For weight savings, at least.  The car is ~massively~ more stiff, so there is that. 

PS: as a side note, the suspension on the FF03 is mostly TB03/TRF418 stuff.  The knuckles, suspension arms, driveshafts and such, are all from the TRF crowd.