I think you've missed the point, in the case of where I work the budgets are huge for what is being raced and the cars are competitive. We won both the major championships we run cars for, one car ran in a different championship which it was leading until it got badly damaged in a crash (and was repaired and upgraded to be raced in a different series). The cars have everything adjustable (which is effectively free) and lots of components and the entire suspension geometry redesigned in house (which definitely isn't free) the adjustments are largely doable in relatively short periods of time, even in pitstops. Only a few basic adjustments are made though because despite having three day meetings there just isn't any real point in doing it, if the driver(s) are comfortable with the car then that is what you need. In reality data analysis can never be so precise and clinical because the conditions are simply never the same. The fact that LFS has unrealistic setup ranges and fidelity is simply because they are unrealistic, the over dependence on sets is because we always have exactly the same track surface, ambient temperature and humidity, exactly the same unwarped car, the same brand new tyres and engine. In reality it simply isn't possible to do this regardless of how big your budget is or how much you love yourself.
Sorry? I don't believe for a second that anybody, especially the old bill, could ever attempt to justify deliberately and totally needlessly slowing down to deal with a car that is too close so is going to be even less likely to slow down in time.
If anything it is likely to reduce power by mucking up the manufacturers designed gas flow, which were like they were for a reason.
I think I should emphasise that I would never hit someone who hadn't done something extremely dangerous and known exactly what they were doing. If someone is sitting in the fast lane at 50mph then so be it I'll flash my lights but I'm not going to hit them, equally if a muppet pulls out dangerously and then attempts to right their wrong and put their foot down then I'm not going to hit them or flash my lights or in any other way have a go at them, people do make mistakes and silly decisions after all.
In this case though the other driver made a very dangerous move, which had I been driving 10mph faster (which is pretty typical on said piece of road) there is no way I could have slowed to his pace, the road was completely empty apart from the three vehicles involved, he had made no attempt to pull out earlier, I had not changed my speed and he made no attempt to indicate. Having got over the initial stupid maneuver I expected him to make some attempt to speed up and rectify the situation. He didn't just show me the brake lights (which is highly dangerous in itself) but slammed on the brakes hard. I managed to stop in my car by braking as hard as I could, had he been driving a more modern car with better brakes I would have gone straight into the back of him, equally if he had done it infront of a perfectly legal classic car, HGV or towing car he would have caused an accident. Had he done this to an unmarked police car I'm sure he wouldn't be driving any more. I don't think giving him a light tap square on the back of his car is going to cause an accident, in the worse case scenario we're doing 44mph on a deserted dual carriageway with barriers on either side, even in the event of an accident you'd have to try to do anything more than a glancing cosemtic blow to your car in this case (the bemused lorry driver had already repassed the pair of us nearly ground to a halt in the fast lane). TBH I wouldn't be suprised if a driver like that would do the same thing in the fast lane of a busy motorway, where he would be guarranteed to cause a pile up.
Absolute worst thing to do is show the brake lights, many drivers (including myself) will happily hit a car deliberately brake testing them. Just last Friday I did exactly that, I was coming up the outside lane @ 75mph on a 70mph perfectly straight section of dual carriageway, there were two other vehicles around a lorry in the slow lane and a Primera traveling somewhat slower than the speed limit behind said lorry. At the last minute the Primera pulled out without indicating and forced me to brake, speed now down to 57mph according to the satnav (the boss's of course, I stubbornly insist on reading maps
). I then followed about a car length behind the car rather frustrated that it had dangerously pulled out infront of me and now wasn't doing anything to improve the situation by barely driving faster than the lorry. Evidentely the old boy driving it felt he had some kind of right to be as anti-social as possible and decided to brake hard infront of me, and more than testing the brakes speed was down to 44mph according to the GPS, with the slightest tap of his back bumper he instantly found the accelerator passed the lorry and got out the way again.Whilst I felt it was safe had anything happened it would be your fault for brake testing, simply don't do it, especially when the car behind looks like it is old and solid and wouldn't give two shits about getting physical.
I think it is quite possible for a US F1 team to do well without outside factory assistance, there's some of the best facilities, engineers and genuine engineering innovation going on in America at the moment, particularly in stock car racing. Whilst big old V8s kept deliberately simple may seem obsolete and simple, which they are, there is still room for true innovation, Racecar Engineerings stock car supplement is often the most interesting bit. If anybody is capable to take radical rule changes in their stride it may well be a group of engineers/racing team that are currently racing in something with a proper open door to innovation (sportscar/American stuff?).
I suppose I've got 4 different angles of experience.
Riley 1.5 stage rally car - tyre pressures, 3 choices of tyre (gravel, fast road, road legal semi-slick), choices of different designs of steel and aluminum brake drums (in development, not really a setup choice), brake shoe material, all geometry is modified but fixed (other than standard tracking).
Morgan Roadster (road legal race car) - tyre pressures, single control tyre for all conditions (although other wet tyres are allowed few bother with the hassle/cost on road tyres), camber shims (everybody has them set to maximum allowed by series), 40 notch single way adjustable dampers (rather cheap units, better ones would have fewer adjustments over a smaller more useful range), brake regulator (under car, not worth cockpit mounting).
F4 (single seaters, wings and slicks) - tyre pressures, control slicks/free wets (but we only use one type), fully adjustable suspension arms (mostly in order to get the geometry how it was designed to be, not adjusting it from standard), adjustable camber, caster (car dependent), ride height/corner weights, wings (total guesswork, just move them up and down in a slot done by feel and not really replicable), adjustable coil over dampers (changing springs is difficult and time consuming without specialist equipment). Gear ratios are adjustable, but it takes at least half an hour to do so is rarely done trackside unless absolutely essential.
Endurance racing BMW E36/E46 2 litre 4, 6 cyl M3, V8 (races between 2-24 hours) - cars are literally ready to go out again without work after a 24 hour race, well built and reliable usually finish far higher than over stressed machines that are quicker in terms of raw pace. There are very few adjustments made really, the cars are setup for the drivers that drive them and stay the same pretty much all season (bar dampers/wings/gearing if really necessary). The cars are setup more towards what the drivers want than what might be theoretically faster, there's no point in setting a car up to be quick if it just ends up in the wall. The cars always run the same hard compound slicks (probably like R4s in LFS!), the tyres can last upto 4 hours, meaning two pitstops, keeping pit time and cost down. During the build process pretty much anything can be changed, and the suspension is redesigned, better cars will have 4 way adjustable dampers, typically with about 8 notches on each setting. Rear wings are adjustable (but aren't terribly precise), the aero package has to be decided during shell preparation. There is little that can be done about changing front downforce, high downforce cars have adjustable winglets that help a little but really it simply has to be balanced with the rear wing and if you build a car without a suitable front splitter to put on it then there is nothing you can do trackside. Gearing can be changed, but rarely is. Changing the final drive is easier, a quick diff change with military precision takes 14 minutes.
Whether it is still an advantage following better clutch pack modeling is not the point, it is still widely used in LFS and totally unrealistic for modern single seaters and GT cars. There are very few examples of modern GT cars comparable to LFSs GTRs where locked differentials are used as an alternative to a clutch pack system (other than for cost saving in grass roots racing). There have been a few examples where locked diffs have been used in circuit racing, but nearly always either in very high power endurance racing prototypes or unsophisticated older GT cars where the track surfaces were a lot worse than today, these were still the exception rather than the rule and always came with lots of understeer as a price to pay. Usually justified because it was both made a wildly powerful car (we don't have any in LFS) controlable and easier to drive at the expense of outright speed and because of issues with clutches not be strong enough to take the torque (never been an issue for LFS type GT cars).
Aside from the RWD cars, where there is at least an arguement that it is possible and has been done before is the issue of FWD cars with locked diffs. In all the time it has been up for debate nobody has ever found me a believable example of a front wheel drive circuit racing car using a fully locked diffential. In most front wheel drive cars it would make the steering extremely heavy (which we get round) and would put huge forces over the driveshafts, causing all sorts of issues, especially if they haven't been equalised correctly. I don't think we have any driveshaft twisting simulated, which would also adversely effect a car with a locked differential.
Adjustments in real cars are not as precise and cannot be performed trackside so easily. They are mainly for basic setup to account for manufacturing tolerance, accident damage and general bodging. The perfect car wouldn't have much suspension adjustment, producing fastenings and adjustment mechanisms adds drag and weight where you want it least. In reality testing time and data feedback is limited and the car, track and weather are never exactly the same between sessions as they are in the sterile world of LFS atm, personally I think the sterilness is a bigger issue than the freedom of setups, if the cars allowed pointlessly precise setup adjustments that wouldn't be an issue if LFS somehow randomly made slight changes to the shape and structure of the car and all suspension components to accomodate for real life wear and tear on a car, which is really far from a rigid body.
But forced cockpit view also stops custom view, which lots of people still use in (supposedly) realistic views that they can't get with cockpit view atm.
Sorry if I didn't make it clear, I was talking about unrealistic views achievable with the custom view rather than branding all custom views unrealistic. Personally I'd like to get rid of the wheels view and have no separate custom view option, just the current cockpit view adjustable within realistic limits.
You're a clean driver and have a 100% CTRA yellow flag ratio?
Firstly do not use chase cam, and there's no point in asking for it to have mirrors, hopefully it will disappear as an option from actual driving, as well as unrealistic custom views.
FM servers have a few issues, namely they're oval racing in LFS, which has ridiculous bump drafting single seaters and standing starts at the best of times. To add to the issue the majority (but not all) of racers on FM servers are clueless idiots who don't use mirrors, have no resemblance of driving standards and mostly struggle with standing starts. People like yourself are only on FM servers because you are incapable of driving cleanly and using your mirrors on servers which involve turning both ways.
FM operate very tightly, with lots of InSim nonsense. If you follow the rules you won't get banned, if you don't like it go somewhere else.
FM servers have a few issues, namely they're oval racing in LFS, which has ridiculous bump drafting single seaters and standing starts at the best of times. To add to the issue the majority (but not all) of racers on FM servers are clueless idiots who don't use mirrors, have no resemblance of driving standards and mostly struggle with standing starts. People like yourself are only on FM servers because you are incapable of driving cleanly and using your mirrors on servers which involve turning both ways.
FM operate very tightly, with lots of InSim nonsense. If you follow the rules you won't get banned, if you don't like it go somewhere else.
Nothing but sharing it between two PCs is a bit tricky
Sounds about right. I've got an E6750, 8800GT and 2GB of RAM, 1 hard drive and 2 DVD drives. Nothing has been tweaked or overclocked, just as they came out the box.
Ok then guess I just got unlucky/poor quality rather than a PSU that couldn't cope with my demands?
Need a new PSU
My current PSU (Huntkey 550W) has failed (slightly over a year so presumably out of warranty) in my not terribly high demand computer. I've currently put an Antec 500W one in its place (out of a similar spec PC). So now I obviously need a new one that isn't going to break or break the bank and would it be worthwhile replacing the Antec one at the same time?
Basically yes, assuming the tractor wasn't on its rev limiter in top when the test ended then its shorter gearing would have been far more advantageous over the entire course of the race.
Last edited by ajp71, .
The standard turbo cars were good for 180mph, and chances are they weren't producing much more than the given power figure, just it wasn't a typical inflated figure because it wasn't of interest to do so and the car was well designed and most critically very aerodynamic. IIRC a McLaren F1 would only have required 250bhp to break the double ton. The gearing on the Supra is very long, something that will disadvantage it in the case Blueflame is talking about (although he has failed to realise this). Given a nice broad powerband the Supra can get away with it.
Slicks are pointless on a trackday car, put some hard compound performance tyres on it and you should get several trackdays without going noticeably slower.
They've tightened up on this a lot and you face a prison sentence if prosecuted.
In the UK you will not be covered by your insurance on a track day. Unless you're driving something exceptionally valuable and hard to fix once a year on track insurance is likely to be a waste of money.
You can't measure how a car will be in the real world on a test track, they're still acceleration figures from full throttle acceleration between a certain speeds and show nothing about responsiveness.
Where?
You will have to change gear more often in an equivalent diesel car, the powerband of a diesel is so small you won't be able to get away with sticking in one gear in a diesel like you can in a petrol. Often torque gets confused with powerband and people who have never driven one like yourself get the impression that a diesel will produce its torque from idle and be comfortable reasonably quick and economical to drive in such a way (which larger petrols are), couldn't be further from the truth.
I think you still don't understand what throttle response means and how it relates to driving satisfaction and comfort, not to mention how performance figures never give a true indication of what the real world performance of a car will be like.
Jamie you're getting muddled up with torque and throttle response. Both your petrol bikes should be very responsive, the smaller one will probably be a bit more responsive, but it doesn't really make a difference. You put your foot down/twist your risk and the engine starts delivering its goods as quickly as possible and if you're trickling along at low revs then it will be low end torque that determines how much power you get. In a diesel the difference is that by putting your foot down you have to wait for a response, even if it can deliver much more power at the revs you start from you've still got to wait for it to do so, this is highly frustrating and makes any chance of proper throttle control in a diesel remote. The car that is actually fastest is irrelevant to driving satisfaction, which is where diesels fail badly at.
I don't know what magazines you read but I certainly don't see many journalists saying anything other than such and such a diesel engine is technically superb but it lacks response and driving satisfaction of the petrol. If you haven't driven a diesel I suggest you can't appreciate how driving satisfaction is affected.
I don't know what magazines you read but I certainly don't see many journalists saying anything other than such and such a diesel engine is technically superb but it lacks response and driving satisfaction of the petrol. If you haven't driven a diesel I suggest you can't appreciate how driving satisfaction is affected.
You should be able to instantly identify how many cylinders and what form of ignition you're engine is running on with ease.
Torque is totally irrelevant, you can have your power anywhere in the engine it doesn't really matter. The two things that are important in a road engine are responsiveness (which diesels are hopeless at) and the powerband, if you've only got a small range to use your enormous torque it is far worse than having a bit everywhere, hence why in a diesel you have to be constantly changing gear and your example shows just how little you appreciate about the difference of a diesel. In your example a typical diesel would be bellow its powerband and when the engine finally got round to responding to the request for more speed it wouldn't have anything to deliver and rather than a massive amount of torque very little would happen and even a powerful 'sports' diesel would get bogged down and not have the power it needs when it needs it. A petrol will typically respond and pull from pretty much any revs, smaller engines won't be so good at low revs but they don't chug along so nicely down there anyway.
No it isn't the Rover 45 was the medium sized saloon. The 25/ZR was a hatchback based on the Mk3 200, a good car for its time but mechanically they're a 15 year old front wheel drive hatchback and things have moved on a long way, and if you're that picky about mileage and feel then you may as well forget about them.
Dream on...
You never drove it quickly and it was a diesel? Ford Europe has been producing the best handling and all round dynamically excellent cars since the Focus (although they may be slipping a bit with the fat new range). If you really don't like the Fiesta for its lack of feel then forget about anything VAG or Rover were producing 10 years ago! Or any other modern FWD car really.
It really isn't that bad, you're going to get similar mileage from any car of a similar age that you're looking at. If you want something faster (bigger engine) and more involving (going to have to be a petrol) you're not going to get that mileage. Then again there is the question why do you need something bigger if you're main concerns are lack of involvement (heavy overly powerful engines do nothing to help), cost (going t be more expensive to insure, tax and fix) and fuel economy (likewise)
Standard grade petrol all comes from the same sources and is bought and sold by traders in London, even if there is a substantial difference between sources (which I doubt with the quality of modern fuel) each petrol station won't stock the same source fuel for long.
You can pick E36 M3s up for that, complete dogs though, an old car being cheap probably means it is well past its sell by date.
Whilst there may be potential in compression igintion systems it certainly isn't with diesel as we know it, regardless of whether they can do the task on paper modern diesels still sound horrible, are less responsive than the petrol cars (far more important than peak power for everyday driving) and have narrow powerbands. Trying to compare spark and compression ignition engines isn't straight forward, simply saying that a forced induction engine can beat a naturally aspirated engine of the same capacity is meaningless, not to mention the rules have been bent in their favour. If there were no rules I'm pretty sure alcohol powered forced induction spark ignition would be favoured for circuit racing.
Generally the bigger better organised track days are open pitlane days, where you can come and go and change drivers at your leisure. The issue with open pitlane days are there is a limit to how many cars can be on track at a time, often the trackday is sold as a 3 session type day but gets converted to open pitlane if the entry isn't too high.
It is a Rover 25 with a bodykit and a big heavy diesel engine. If you really want one get a petrol Rover 25 and then upgrade to the ZR the suspension yourself. What do you want from this car? Do you just want it too be fast or have you completely missed the point that being fast and fun and involving to drive are completely different things, and in front wheel drive cars the trend tends to be that more power produces a worse drivers car in chassis that aren't properly sorted (ie. Rovers and VWs).
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