I can chime in here regarding the weight issue and tell you that it IS possible to have 50lbs or more of misc weight on your car.
I have a 34 Ford Coupe that weighed 1181 race ready when I got it. (That is with 20 lbs of lead)
It now weighs 1110 race ready. (That is with 20 lbs of lead)
I removed my electric cooling fans, all my guages and misc wires, any metal shrouds in the front end, plastic ducts in the front end, a parker pumper system, all extra zip ties, wires, steel brackets etc that were there but not serving a purpose.
I switched to the lightweight aero wheels, and changed ALL my body panels. In the end I saved 71 lbs on the rebuild!
The two biggest surprises to me were the difference in weight of the body panels and how much weight removing my guages saved me.
Removing the guages and misc wires saved me a total of 9 lbs.
I dont have a total weight reduction on the body panels as I did them one piece at a time over a one year period, but I can tell you that if you have the old OLD style body like I did it is extremely heavy compared to the new stuff because there is a ton of fiberglass used and its much thicker.
My old main shell weighed 38 lbs and my new one weighs 27lbs.
It all adds up like you said but there are probably a lot of places to save weight other than brake lines.
Feel free to message me with any questions and I will gladly try and help you shed some weight if youd like.
Derek