As with any racecar we started with pulling out everything that wouldn't be needed. Starting with the interior. Seems the water came in to about arm level in the car so seats were ruined, carpet, door cars, center console was all covered in mildew and stained.
After pulling out all of the body harness, carpet, headliner, seats, trunk, dashboard, belts, fuel tank, etc I weighed the car to see roughly what I was working with. Here's the rough weight with all the interior removed minus the dash bar, fuel cell removed, doors cut out, trunk cut out. With ABS removed and some more cutting the car could have been just over 2,000lbs but I didn't want to remove those parts at that time.
Figuring I still need to add seats, electronics, cage, big brakes, a turbo kit, bigger wheels the goal was to shoot for the car realistically being roughly 2,400-2,500lbs without driver.
As you can see the car is 50-50 side to side, and ~57-43. Before beginning to add weight in I wanted to figure out exactly where the center of gravity was so that I could begin adding weight as close to that point as possible. By taking corner weights with the car flat, raised front to back, and then raised side to side I could triangulate the weight balance and find the CoG. After doing the calculations it turned out the CoG was about 12" off the ground and right around the location of the shifter.
Knowing this I could begin designing the cage and planning on where to locate the weight that had to be added back in.