Automation Airfield Power Lap Times

[Janekk]

Since my race car time got beaten I decided to replace turbo-charged engine in Monster S designed for "road legal" version of the car and replace it with proper racing engine from my Class A quarter mile dragster.

[strop]

Oh here we go, now that's upping the ante! It's onnnnnnn.

EDIT: ... aaaaaaaaand this will do for now. Learnt a fair bit about the new elements of tuning in this round.



EDIT2: oops, managed to shave off a little more

[Janekk]

Yup, record is all yours, I did last car only because I already had engine so it was quick swap, too much effort required to close gap this big. BTW how much HP on that car?

[strop]

If I recall correctly it has 1156, it's a modified (i.e. extra stroke) version of the 98RON NA XP V8 I used in the original car that put out 1111hp to get 1hp:kg and had decent reliability. This one I pushed it right to the limit.

Your car is easily 20kg lighter than mine, is it all just in the engine or is there something more to it? I've taken out just about everything I can think of except the brakes, because the car needs to slow down too!

Also, because I'm more interested in seeing how low we can get the time, can you just see what happens when you move one of your wings towards the back? That changes the front:rear balance of the downforce and I think you'd actually shave off a couple of tenths if you more closely matched to the weight ratio as well as the suspension setup... and I suspect that the power/weight balance in your car is superior to mine.

[Janekk]

Wing in front gives me better time, I probably would need to adjust suspension to find out if overall it would help. I suspect there could be something to gain with gearing since I haven't really played much with it. BTW it's 1102 HP on my car. If you are interested in tweaking it and seeing what I'm doing differently I can send you file, I'm not too much into speed competitions anyway so I'm not concerned about "company secrets". Der Bayer's CTC is much more my alley.

EDIT:
I figured it won't be fair if I'll send the file just to strop. So here it is. One thing though, there is something funky going on with cooling slider, just set it at around 610 kJ/s to get exact time while still having some reliability on engine.

[strop]

Edited post:

That's quite the different setup to my car, so for the most part I can't adjust it the way I did for mine and achieve the same results. In fact while I was able to shave off a few hundredths somehow I have no idea how I did it or how to replicate it!

• Your engine has a larger bore and shorter stroke, so it has less power. It's also not tuned as aggressively as possible in that you could enrich the mixture by about 0.5 and increase the exhaust diameter to eke out a bit more power. Whether this is actually a good idea however, is another matter as increasing the power seems to ruin the balance.
• The way your brake discs operate boggles my mind and goes against everything that I do with my cars LOL. I tend to make the rear brakes smaller than the front. Here, it doesn't seem to have any benefit. This is not how the brakes tends to behave in my cars I don't know why.
• The way your car tyres, suspension is set up is such that it occupies a very very fine sweet spot where it can pull 2.1g in the 250m circle test. Adjusting the wheels, suspension or aero in isolation wrecks this balance. Only by somehow adjusting all three in sync was I able to fluke an improvement in time, which at least did confirm that there is a bit of room to move if I shift the downforce rearward.

These are surprising results. I'll have to think about it some more.

[Janekk]

It's in the car? Just go to engine tab and save it if you want it separately or am I missing something?

[Janekk]

There definitely is room to improve, as far as brakes are concerned, I'm not exactly sure why it works this way but I don't question results. With engine tune I actually restricted exhaust that small bit on purpose and left it there since it was giving me better results, guess why . One very vague hint: it was originally built for 1/4 mile dragster. I'm not too sure what's up with fuel mix, I don't remember if it's something I did on purpose or just kind of left it like this, one thing to note is that while HP gain is very small it also increases torque which makes for heavier gearbox, could be that. Bore and stroke was chosen kind of on random. I'm not that dedicated. However shorter stroke increases reliability letting you get away with less cooling or more revs so it's not all bad. Well question does remain what ultimately is better? Suspension is set pretty much on a tipping point, main reason why I didn't want to spend time improving my lap time, I did suspect that completely different setup could possibly get better values but it's just too much work man .

EDIT: I think by chance I might have just solved the mystery of why my car is so different from yours. I didn't flare out front arches to maximum because I like to keep things even and symmetrical. Yes even on track attack monster.

[Janekk]

I'm bored so I started tweaking my car again, I improved my time and it's 1:09.56 now, last bit of improvement however is seriously confusing me because it should be going around corners slower yet it actually is faster once you put it around track, am I somehow gaining on straights? I'm not sure how changes I made would help here though.. There is something really funny going on with this car, nothing on it works like you'd expect it to. I also confirmed that my front wheel arches most likely aren't a problem.

[strop]

I've noticed that higher maximum G in the turning tests don't strictly correlate to faster times around the track, and I'm not 100% certain as to why either, whether it's something to do with the way the car handles transfers or bumps (the extent of the latter depends on the "sportiness" parameter of the track itself).

Funnily enough, the time I managed to squeeze out of your car was in fact a 1:09.56! As usual, I'll be roused from my slumber if anybody bests my time

[Janekk]

EDIT:



Better get cracking strop!

[strop]

I almost didn't notice this new development! Off I go again, in that case...

[nialloftara]

New production leader with a revamped Buffalo!

*edited* a few spy shots

[strop]

Oh goodness! Looks like you guys will be wearing those crowns for a while yet, I clearly have to find my way into a new sweet spot...

[rileybanks]

REALLY?! I come home from 2 days without internet signal, having last night got down to a 1:10.9, to post the time and I've been beaten to it.Looks like I gonna have to find another tenth...