Striping the back seats out - too light?

[Martin_172]

thinking of striping my back seats out the car since 1.2s are terrible with 3 or more people in them anyway!

thing i was wondering was would the back end be too light without the back seats and be too twitchy or more likely to spin?

cheers!

 

[Fred@BTM]

no, get on with it!

 

[bigbruno71]

put a cup boot spoiler on it to up the downforce?

 

[d4ve86]

i striped the back out of my car before i did a track day last turesday and when i got to the track i took the spare wheel out. didnt notice the back being twitchy, i did wonder about there being no weight at the back but it was fine, everything is back in now tho havnt decided how to keep it.

 

[GordonD]

The rear seats weigh bugger all. Taking them out just makes the car noisier because they stop noise coming forward from the rear suspension. I know because I regularly have to fold them to carry things, and folding them gets in the way of the front seats and crumples the seat material, so its just was easy to take them out and leave them at home. I have no need for them because the only people I'd want to carry wouldn't fit anyway.

That said does anyone know whether you can remove the bar thingo that the rear seat backs attach to. If you leave it there its hard to put a flat carpeted floor in there. But I'm not sure whether the cars arse or something else vital underneath like the fuel tank would fall off if I removed those bolts.

 

[Blue4Ever]

If I remember correctly it'sfine to remove that.

 

[George16v]

Yeah on the mk2's it is just there to hold the seats down I thought - get it out..

 

[Phill1978]

the rear luggage bar acts like a rear brace hence the oversized bolts on it.

i have had my rear seats out for 4 months solid 800-1000miles a month work / personal driving. initially when you remove them you get a better sound especially bouncing off the limiter and it feels quicker. i weighed up the cup seats at 20kg inc luggage bar seen as the cup seats are the most basic either your 1.2 will have same or better so that figure should stand for you.
however having driven very fast over country roads i can confirm the handling gets worse unless your car is lowered and i also suggest keeping luggage bar in (5kg`s of the weight) or getting rear strutbrace instead (ktec carbon fiber perhaps) my cup sat higher at the back and looked a bit silly.
why does the handling get worse ? its Front engined and front wheel drive and there is no seats in the back of a car with all the stuff in the frontwithout back seats weight distribution (although not exellent anyway) gets too uneven at speed. the short wheelbase of the car means that at the best of times a clio will bounce / lift over undulating roads at speed and without back seats and bar in place the back end slides left to right.
i had a go against my dad`s audi 3.0tdi the otherday he said while i was in front reaching over 1/00 on a road with a bad negative camber the tail end was all over the place which i felt also too much bounce. im not saying your 1.2 is going to pelt down the road as fast as my (at the time 1000kg 175bhp cup) but i know have them in again and its miles more stable at speed it corners better and doesnt pitch as much it also feels stiffer at the back and of course if much quieter (even though i dont mind noise hence nearly 4,000miles 4months of no back seats and a hillpower fitted) i have to say its a nice change to have it all back together. also makes the car look cheap without them in.

if your car is lowered, and you keep luggage bar in then expect 15kg weight saving lots more tyre noise and a small perceptable increase in accelaration, however its easy to remove seats and so you may aswell give it a go to try it out and put them back in when you have finished, i would bother re-carpeting etc.. until you know you can live with the extra lift and noise.

hope this helps, just my experience, im sure if my car were lowered a bit more at the back it wouldnt be so bad but thats just the experience i have had.

i await a lenghy discusion about luggage bars.. lol

phill

 

[Martin_172]

cars lowered -60mm on an apex kit and i thought removing the back seats would make quite a big difference on a small engine? ill give it a go next time ive got nothing to do!

 

[Jones]

put a cup boot spoiler on it to up the downforce?

LOL

 

[Martin_172]

apparently gives 50% more downforce or some shite? ^^ or so i read here

 

[bmh.01]

I did it once with my old 1.2 when I was bored, lost the rear seats and spare wheel and toolkit.
You could definetly feel the weight that'd been lost, I never noticed the back end being skitchy but I never really went over any rough roads.
Roads i'd been down before that made the backend bobble around like no tomorrow with the seats in probably would have been rather worse.

 

[George16v]

It wholly depends on how you drive the car - on a 1.2 you will def notice a difference matey especially if you remove the spare wheel too.

You will mainly notice it if you brake (which you shouldn't do when cornering anyway) as obvious the brake bias is the same as normal but the rear is lighter.

As long as your accelerating through those corners you'll be fine - would def. get it lowered / change the susp. though if your looking for better handling