Chapter 10. Low Hanging Fruit

Anyone in the pursuit of shedding weight from a sporty car is eventually presented with similar choices. Some of these choices can be quite expensive and questionable while others are relatively less so. For me, these choices were the low hanging fruit toward making meaningful improvements in making the car better.

Antigravity Li Battery:

Lithium batteries have been used by manufacturers, including Porsche, to lower vehicle weight. I've known about Antigravity batteries for years but never bought them for any of my prior cars. I guess I was not trying to create a feathery Boxster R then. But now an Antigravity battery was an easy choice to make. It is a direct and easy replacement for the OE battery and resulted in a whopping 37 pound weight savings for the 40Ah variant. On a pounds-shed per dollar scale, no other modifications is more effective than a Lithium battery. And the fact that Antigravity batteries have a way to start a car that has the battery discharged, for whatever reason, is an additional nice feature that provides some peace of mind if that ever happens.

Goodyear Eagle F1 Supersport Tires:

My car came with Michelin PS4S tires that are well liked. I had them on my Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio and also on a BMW M3 and I was happy to have them on the Boxster too. With about 10K miles on the odometer, I hit a pothole and destroyed the front left tire so it was time to get another set. I was going to get another set of MPS4S but then just out of curiosity I started researching and felt there could be other equally good options. Since shedding weight has been the goal, I was also looking for lighter tire options. Discount Tire lists the weights and I noticed Goodyear Eagle F1 Supersport tires because their listed weights were quite a bit less than MPS4S. I was intrigued. Upon further research, I found they are high quality tires. I decided to get them, mainly because of the lower stated weights. 

Immediately after installation, I noticed much better steering response and feedback. The improvement was significant and I was thrilled. I had unintentionally made an excellent choice by sheer luck.

I am not sure if the weights listed on Discount Tire are a mistake, and I did not weigh MPS4S or the Goodyears, so I have not personally verified the ~12 lbs weight savings per Discount Tire (for 235/35R20, 265/35R20) but I am impressed by the handling even if there are modest weight saving. I'll just assume the total weight is only 4 lbs less and not 12 lbs less.

Good Wheel Alignment:

I drove my car for almost a year until I got an alignment and I regret not doing this sooner. The car handled just fine but after this alignment, it handled significantly better. The turn-in on corner entry improved a lot it just felt more on its toes and ready to change direction. This alignment has in fact opened a whole pandora's box for me as I went deep into learning about alignment specs and how to get the optimal alignment setup leading me to the Dundon suspension components. Learning about watching videos and reading articles by experts such Mike Kojima (MotoIQ) and Dundon guys has been very educational. I've loved cars for a long time and I feel a bit ashamed that I never bothered to learn about aspects of cars suspensions prior to this. So, in a way, not only is this an improvement to my cars handling, but also my own know how.



I was so impressed with the handling improvements from this modest alignment with OE components that that I decided to explore further with some Dundon components.

The battery, tires and alignment resulted in either weight loss or handling improvements or both bringing Boxster's score up to 77.25 and weight down to 3111 lbs.

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