Quote from wheel4hummer :

You can't drive without a fan belt.

ROFL, thats priceless ... its not 1960 any more, these days the fanbelt doesn't drive the fan, just the alternator and sometimes the power steering pump.

I don't know what would be the problem sooner - no water pump or no alternator? Probably no water pump if the car's being driven hard...

The formula cars won't have fanbelts at all...

wait.. are yall talking about fan belts or drive belts?

fan belts will just overheat the engine some... drive belts however, if that goes ... you'd be screwed, the engine wouldn't run any more i think everyone here is confused (except tristan, he is being master of the obvious here )

I assume by fanbelt he means drivebelt, since it's already been noted that not many if any cars have a belt driven fan anymore, obviously

And also obviously I was thinking about the road cars

Assuming your battery isn't shot, why would the engine (in a roadcar, just to make sure nobody is confused) not run at all without drivebelts?

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

I assume by fanbelt he means drivebelt, since it's already been noted that not many if any cars have a belt driven fan anymore, obviously

I assumed fanbelt = drivebelt. I'm not getting into specifics, but most of the cars in LFS wouldn't run very well without a fanbelt or whatever the f*ck you want to call it.

nope, in some cars the driveshaft has an extended "gear" which goes around the fan and only the fan, while the "gear" before it drives everything else

What seems to have happened here is a confusion - possibly because of those on the other side of the pond using incorrect () terminology.

Fanbelt - used, mainly on older cars, to drive a mechanical fan, and occasionally a water pump
Auxilliery Drivebelt - Shortened to just drivebelt, and used to drive alternators, power steering pumps, air-conditioning pumps etc.
Cambelt or Timingbelt - Toothed belt or chain used to connect the crank to the camshafts, often via oil pump pulleys, water pump pulleys and various idler and tensioner pulleys.

Cars will quite happily run without the first two. They don't without the third. Some engines survive when a cambelt snaps (non-interference engines, where valves can never hit pistons) others aren't (interference engines, where at some point the valves and the pistons wish to occupy the same space).

Thanks for clearing that up, I've always called the 'auxilliery drivebelt' a fanbelt, thats what I meant

Different cars have different combinations of things on their belts, I managed to drive a car to work and back with no alternator/belt for a month, just running off the battery (took a spare with me and recharged overnight), and that was what I was thinking of in my first post in this thread

Cambelt breakage would come as part of engine damage anyway, I guess its up to the devs as to how they want to treat water pumps - perhaps the track-built cars would have one thats driven direct from the engine, or maybe an electric pump, either way if you loose the water pump you could maybe make it halfway round most tracks before frying the engine beyond repair - imagine trying to limp back to the pits with steam soming out the bonnet

Quote from JamesK :

Thanks for clearing that up, I've always called the 'auxilliery drivebelt' a fanbelt, thats what I meant

Different cars have different combinations of things on their belts, I managed to drive a car to work and back with no alternator/belt for a month, just running off the battery (took a spare with me and recharged overnight), and that was what I was thinking of in my first post in this thread

Cambelt breakage would come as part of engine damage anyway, I guess its up to the devs as to how they want to treat water pumps - perhaps the track-built cars would have one thats driven direct from the engine, or maybe an electric pump, either way if you loose the water pump you could maybe make it halfway round most tracks before frying the engine beyond repair - imagine trying to limp back to the pits with steam soming out the bonnet

Lots of people call drivebelts fanbelts, and it's an accepted 'misuse'. 99% of intelligent people will understand exactly what you mean.

Brave of you to do that - my car died on me 15 miles after my fanbelt (alternator drivebelt) failed, so I'm out there tensioning it as soon as it starts to squeak now...

I'd just be happy if cambelt failure locks the engine (as valves hit pistons), and therefore lock the wheels until you press the clutch. But cambelt failure is pretty rare really, so it's hardly a priority update.

can't say i've ever heard of a cambelt failure before

It's not that uncommon.

Quote from XCNuse :

can't say i've ever heard of a cambelt failure before

Oh they do happen. Ford CVH engines are renowned for it I believe. Why do you think manufacturers say it should be replaced at ~30k miles? Peugeot used to specify 72,000 miles for a 306 cambelt change, but almost everyone knew that was asking too much and changed them twice as often...

I've had a couple go, its now the first part I change when buying a car, and I purposefully only buy non-interference engines ... but its uncommon to see failure on a racecar since the belt(s) would be changed during any full teardown.

Quote from deggis :

...
When the car takes enough damage (100%), then car = R.I.P. Some kind of "hitpoints" system with different hit areas, similar to first person shooters. Yeah highly unrealistic but better than nothing!
...

Imho, that 100% meter would be just the wrongest (sp ftw!) way of implementing it. In auto racing all collisions have two kind of damage. One is the instant hit damage that takes out the radiator completely or cuts/blocks the fan belts from rotating stalling the engine (). That kind of damage is instant and you know instantly after the crash that the car won't make it. The interesting part is the seconds part, time based, or more precisely put; cumulative damage that builds up as you go. (It's my own term, please bear with me .). An overheating engine is a perfect example of this. As the engine gets hotter the life time of the engine decreases and the inner parts get more stressed as the heat increases. Finally the engine can't take it no more and there is some sort of damage that either breaks the engine totally or just has some other (interesting) side-effect on performance.

But imho "both" damage types should be quite easy to implement because there is really no new things needed to be added, like graphical effects or parts falling off. Those are not needed to "simulate" the inner parts of the car. You don't need the engine to be in flames to be sure that it is the. Suspension damage is of course a bit different. Of course it would require to insert new factors into LFS' physics model .

I'm talking pretty much very generally about this but if you look at what is needed to make the engine suffer we will see that it is quite simple model in the end but the data you put in still needs to reflect reality, not just "feel about right". Basically what I'm trying to say is that building the model isn'y a simple task but the actual model should be quite simple

Basically the engine damage models needs to handle just few things to be able to "simulate engine damage" with acceptable sim-racing depth and all the factors that are needed can be taken from the physical model. The key is the actual damage and impact on performance, not the graphical effect. I the end, it is not likely that the engine just bursts into flames when all the the cooling fuild has leaked

Quote from XCNuse :

well the reason i pointed that out is i figured it would be something plainly listed under scawen's log under the title of engine damage
which is probably under damage

the only time you should really cite examples like that is if it were from before S2
here we are in S2, and you can see that water temps aren't working, and damage we all know is still in beta so.. i figured it makes sense that we dont have specific part damage yet, but deffinetly on the list

Again, you just suggest improvements, you don't have any control if your suggestions is S2, S3, never, next patch etc. So at least from my opinion it does not matter if it is likely on list or not, suggestion is suggestion which most likely is ignored or on list already, so really does not matter.

+1 for anything that could discourage the dismal dimwitted behaivor exhibited on lap 1 into T1 as seen on many public servers.

If people have to start caring for their own cars, they will be less likely to do dumb stuff to yours.

Good idea - Make LFS more realistic!

I want the gears that would not physically be able to change from 5th to 1st in 2/10ths of a second, I want a realistic time lag before you can change from one to the next. I want engines that blow up if you change from 4th at 85mph to 1st or at least render some of the gears useless. I want a gearbox that simulates harsh treatment by sticking or missing a cog, so that in the end the less realistic drivers get penalised for their rough treatment.
Oh, and I want a pay rise.

Quote from al heeley :

I want the gears that would not physically be able to change from 5th to 1st in 2/10ths of a second, I want a realistic time lag before you can change from one to the next. I want engines that blow up if you change from 4th at 85mph to 1st or at least render some of the gears useless. I want a gearbox that simulates harsh treatment by sticking or missing a cog, so that in the end the less realistic drivers get penalised for their rough treatment.
Oh, and I want a pay rise.

+1, but what is pay rise, is it something you can eat, never heard from such, limit your wishes at least to some level of realism, asking pay rise is same as asking cows that can fly