Rear Removal

[hyperyaris]

I removed the back seat and everthing else out of the back of my Yaris. All there is, is the factory sheet metal lol. It looks very utilitarian. I will measure mpg gain next tank.

[Frank Lee]

Good luck with that.

[McTimson]

I just removed my back seats as well...along with over 100 lbs of extra tools, books, and other junk that was in the back and the trunk.

I don't know if it's because I'm driving my car less or because it's lighter, but I can notice something different when I drive it now, the clutch seems to catch faster, and it seems to handle better as well. Could just be in my head though, who knows.

[blueflame]

100lbs from a 2000lb car is like a 200lb person losing 10lbs.

[Piwoslaw]

Whenever I haul cargo I take the seats and cover out of the back (3x20kg+5kg) and keep them in the garage until I need to haul people. The whole setup weighs as much as one person and is only about 4% of the weight of the car without driver. Whether it really reduces my FE is a subject for discussion, but the car does seem to handle slightly differently. This may be b/c I can hear what's going on in the back, like fuel swooshing around in the tank.
Removing the spare would give another 20kg of savings, as would getting anal about carpets, plastic trim, unneeded wires and motors, speakers, etc.

[vtec-e]

Thats mad! I have been running without the back seat this past week and have noticed my P&G is much easier. Well, the pulse bit is anyway. It accelerates like a kart! However, it coasts down a little bit quicker so it probably cancels out. I have had to reset my scangauge at the same time so it's hard to tell if i had an improvement.

ollie

[Piwoslaw]

OK, I've had this on my disk for years and this is a good place to finally use it

Here is another reason to keep the weight in the rear down:

[Clev]

I have my nightly climb home to 4,650 feet, and 100 pounds makes a difference. I keep the vacuum gauge at a constant 6 in. hg while climbing, and with the tire chains, winter boots, eMac and miscellaneous junk removed from the trunk, I started averaging 2-3 mph faster at that constant load level.

[RobertSmalls]

How's the interior noise? Did you do anything to cover the gas tank access port?

The Legacy has a sticker under the rear seat cushions, "Do not place cargo here before reinstalling seat cushions". It's also got brake and fuel lines, and wires back there.

The Insight has half of an electric car under the carpet in the back.

[McTimson]

There's definitely much more noise in my car now. It was lough enough before getting rid of the seats, which also apparently acted as sound dampeners. It definitely doesn't help that my exhaust is pieced together by Autozone clamps and pipe segments, or that there's a visible hole near my rear passenger side wheel well from the rust. But, I only have front speakers in my car, so with the volume turned up a little bit, I can ignore the noise.

And, I didn't cover up the gas tank access stuff. It's just sitting there. I haven't smelled anything yet, so I hope it's good.

100 lbs out of 2000 may only be like 10 lbs out of 200, but it's still 5% of the weight. And, most of the weight I removed was in the back of the car, so I suspect that the placement had more to do with the handling than just the weight of it.

The back seats (seat and seat back) only weigh like 20lbs, but I really had a ton of junk back there that I kept thinking was better suited for the car than the apartment...but I was definitely wrong.

There's another Tercel driver who is meticulous about weight savings, and has posted his results here. It's definitely a good baseline for seeing how much different things weigh, a few of them are surprising.