Project-Scuderia

There are so many factors to consider that the process doesn't lend itself to a quantitative formula. So many parts have so many performance requirements, such as strength, weight, finish quality, maintainability, reliability, corrosion resistance, thermal properties, fatigue properties, etc., that all have to be considered, and the actual opportunities to improve the design or the material without compromise are actually very limited. The process started with a lot of operational test & evaluation to determine where the weaknesses were. That's what generated the first upgrades at the beginning of this thread; including human factors (shift paddles), suspension, and brakes.

Lately, it has been more about weight reduction, which allows us to focus on certain parts with specific designs and material properties, like the steel and aluminum parts. But the accessibility of the parts (which drives labor costs and need for special tools & skills), and the commercial availability of the improved parts (or the maturity of the technology, in the case of batteries) has to be considered also. We started the discussion of battery upgrades in this thread about 5 years ago, but it has only become commercially viable to upgrade the battery and the system interface to the car as a whole without compromise, this year.

 

Ti fasteners to replace the steel fasteners on the remaining undertrays beneath the car. The kit weighs 0.825 kg/1.82 lb.

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Both OEM hatches have a lot of adjust-ability through the use of shims under the hinges and the latch, as well as shims under the vents along each side. I started with the same shim count when I installed the CF decklid, and only had to make a minor adjustment with another shim under the latch. There is no adjust-ability in the lower latch. The panel gap/line-up along the top of the spoiler is more important than the gap along the bottom edge of the lid. I consider this tight tolerance more a matter of luck than well-intentioned manufacturing, as I've documented other OEM parts that did have panel fit issues.

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Ti bolts installed on the e-brake caliper on the rear brake assembly.

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Ti fasteners installed in the wheel well, on the undertray, and the rocker panel.

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Grade 5 Ti bolts replace Grade 8 steel bolts, so as long a you source Grade 5 Ti hardware from a reputable source, you are good to go. The wheel bearing cartridge bolts look like they are standard, so that should not be a problem. The caliper bolts are larger, and you need to be very precise on the shaft length and thread length (the bolts are loaded in shear at the mating surface between the caliper and the hub carrier), so you may end up custom ordering them.

 

Another look at the Ti fasteners along the bottom of the OEM CF rocker panel, and the rear undertray.

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More Ti fasteners on the center and front undertrays. The front undertray is just a fiberglass aerodynamic panel, so it uses small M6 fasteners. The center undertray is structural and aluminum, or in my case, carbon fiber, so the fasteners are M8 and load-bearing. By my rough count, about 152 bolts and washers replaced with Titanium just on the underside so far, with more to go.

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The full kits are available on EBay. Custom fasteners are available from Exotic Car Gear.

 

More Ti fasteners in the wheel wells. About 144 new Ti bolts and washers in the wheel wells and on the rocker panels. All the wheel well fasteners are 'surfaced' and can be reached without removing anything. I had to remove some trim panels in the door jambs to access some of the rocker panel fasteners. If you are upgrading to the factory CF rocker panels, you have to do this anyway. If you popped $14K for Ferrari CF rocker panels, might as well throw in another $300 for Ti fasteners while you're in there.

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The factory steel fasteners removed from the e-brake, rear diffuser, and rockers on the Scud weighed in at 0.800 kg/1.76 lb. The Ti fasteners were 0.430 kg/0.95 lb, for a weight savings of 0.370 kg/0.81 lb.

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The factory stock steel fasteners off the rear diffuser and the rear-center undertray weighed 0.295 kg/0.65 lb. The Ti hardware saved 0.090 kg/0.20 lb.

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I have already replaced some of the suspension with Ti hardware, as discussed near the front of this thread. Much of what's left on the suspension will be custom work, so it has to compete for priority with other projects. The upper shock bolts are standard, so would be easy. Remember - the upper hard points are sprung mass, not unsprung mass. The standard Scuderia Ti hardware kit is off of EBay. For custom fasteners, Exotic Car Gear is my go-to source.

 

The OEM steel bolts and washers from the center and front undertrays weighed 1.770 kg/3.90 lb. That's a savings of 0.945 kg/2.08 lb. So, for all the Ti fasteners installed so far on the underside of the car, and in the wheel wells, the total weight reduced is 1.405 kg/3.10 lb. That savings required about 152 fasteners, or about one pound saved for every 50 Ti fasteners. Next up - weight reduction in the engine bay with more CF and Ti components!


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Yes, the galvanized finish silver bolts, lock washers, and large fender washers are from the front and rear undertrays. There are about 30 of them between the two. They are OEM. The washers do not separate from the bolts.

 

I always thought the grey aluminum bulkhead against the firewall in the engine bay looked incongruent between the CF side panels, so when I found a CF panel sold separately, I got one. Side by side, they are nearly the same, but not identical. You have to transfer the rubber seal from the stock part to the CF part, which is easy. It just presses on.

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The OEM bulkhead is a single stamped aluminum sheet, and is very light. An elegant design for a non-load bearing trim piece. It's thin gauge sheet, but because it's stamped as a deep C-channel, it's still very stiff.

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The stock bulkhead cover weighed in at 0.430 kg/0.95 lb. It will be tough to improve on a well-designed aluminum piece that's already less than 1 pound!

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