Do you remove the aluminium bumpers?
 

Do you remove them from your race cars to save weight or do you consider them valuable enough to keep in case of a crash?

Keep them. You can fab lighter replacements if you wish.

They serve a purpose in any crash + a small bump without one will damage more that just a bumper cover.

They're good for about 5-10 mph bumps. Anything more than that and you start getting into structural damage. They also don't stick out all the way to the corners. Sure something is better than nothing but I don't think they really add much to helping with most impacts. I also don't think you should just remove the bumpers by themselves. If you're going to make that jump to lose weight, then go all in and take everything out that's dead weight.

Imagine this....

You're driving and a friend is riding in passenger seat. You rear end someone and your buddy is hurt, perhaps seriously. The friend sues you for negligence. You are on the witness stand and the friend's attorney asks the following questions: 1) did you remove a safety feature of your car namely its aluminum bumpers and 2) would a reasonable person remove such a feature. Of course the answers are yes and no. And if you try to answer the second question yes, then you'll quickly get asked this follow up question: what percentage of 986 owners remove their aluminum bumpers?

You can see where this is going...you'll be found negligent and maybe void your insurance policy in the process.

Do you really think it's worth saving the weight

Thanks guys for your thoughts.

For the record I was intending to keep mine, but I'm curious of the what the racers do. This is for a stripped race car with a full cage. So many things have been altered a!ready that I don't worry about lawsuits. Racing seats and airbag delete comes to mind as other safety critical items. I'm strictly interested in weight contra damage limitation potential.

PCA rules allow the rear bumper to be replaced with a fabricated tubular one (1.5" diameter in my case). This saves about 10 pounds of weight and also looks like it would help airflow through the engine compartment, assuming you have opened up the rear license plate area.

All the Spec Boxsters that I have seen around here (10+) have kept the bumper reinforcements and have no problem getting down to the minimum weight. Considering the amount of body damage these things seem to get, keeping some protection for the rear is a good idea. If you were making a no-holds-barred autocross car with no minimum weight requirement, I would consider it, but not on anything that is used in wheel to wheel racing.

Thanks for the insights. My series allows absolutely no plate contact, but they still seem like a nice thing to have. I do like the tubular bumper idea for airflow. I think I've seen pictures of 996s with stock bumpers with lightening holes in them though. Has anyone else seen those?

EDIT: Here's one

Interesting, at the NOLA race last month, many of the spb racers had removed both front and rear, some keep the front for radiator protection. According to spb rules, the rear can be replaced, but there is no mention of removing/replacing the front (and therefore illegal in spb). After the nola race, I removed the rear and replaced with a lighter steel bumper to save weight. Not planning on touching the front.