Regular Communist (1986) - Racing and Car Rating! [FINAL]

[SeriousSimon]

Nicely done Pyrlix!

Romanov, who had not bothered to introduce their car before the first race are satisfied enough. The engine of the Glasnost' is too weak to allow serious racing, but there is speed in the car. Still, times are rough for Romanov and the rain and the mud are not helping anyone, really. We're looking forward to the next race and to be judged by the jury, after all, Romanov is building cars for the people, not for race tracks.

[Madrias]

As a side-line, post-race observer of the Barely Street Legal League, I have to admit I like the story idea as well. Although, CobaltGirl is right, the BSLL did get a bit... wild... by the end. (For the record, I just finished reading the Barely Street Legal League thread, and it's re-inspired my desire to write again.)

Still, nice to see that my mighty 2.2 liter, turbocharged beast didn't blow up on the track, or end up last. Also glad that in the muddy conditions, I had the right setup. Four wheel drive, mated to an automatic four speed. Both hands on the wheel and no wheel spin! I'd considered a manual, but the comfort and drivability boost of the automatic got the better of me. I'm just glad to see that this time, I built something that appears to know what "competitive" is supposed to mean.

Makes me wonder, though, who's going to run out of gasoline on the way to the next race.

[8bs]

Hmmmm and i thought that a miserable 90hp were enough for the challenge... ha ha

So, it's Gin time...directly from the bottle...with a straw...

[Tycondero]

Hmmmm and i thought that a miserable 90hp were enough for the challenge... ha ha

So, it's Gin time...directly from the bottle...with a straw...

To be honest. I think anything between 85-120hp is totally acceptable. I do not care much about racing in this challenge, these are in a way supposed to be multi purpose vehicles. IMO not race track monsters. No average customer will buy a car because it is so fast around a track, people buy vehicles because they are economical and practical for their purposes. Especially since the cars in this challenge are supposed to be cheapish as well. To have adequate power in a car is to be able to go 160-180 km/h and that good enough for daily use considering speed limits. I know that challenge includes a race, but I never cared about that part much.

[Madrias]

Very true, Tycondero. My choice of 122 horsepower was just based on what I could squeeze out of it while keeping it economical. That was the most horsepower I could make on Regular Unleaded with a 15.0:1 fuel mixture. The turbo is tuned for economy, not power.

The only reason, I think, that mine did okay at the track is because of my all-wheel drive. I built my car for the street, not the track, and my streets can be kinda rough and a bit muddy. I built it for non-ideal conditions.

[Tycondero]

Also I think that adding/doing other races is largely irrelevant. We already know that Trackpaduser's car is going to win every race judging the time advantage. Only place 2 and 3, 7, 8 and 9 seems to be competitive amongst eachother and might have slightly different ranking per track.

[TrackpadUser]

While I will very probably get all 4 points in the racing, my 1.0 comfort, crappy reliability and very high costs will probably get me 0 points in the consumer rating.

But there isn't only one winner of points in racing, and it will definitively mess up the overall rankings at the end, which is the whole point of this challenge.

And appart from saying that I will end up 1st, Leo and Trollercoaster 2nd-3rd (unknown order though), its hard to guess how many points the others will get.

[BlastersPewPew]

Very true, Tycondero. My choice of 122 horsepower was just based on what I could squeeze out of it while keeping it economical. That was the most horsepower I could make on Regular Unleaded with a 15.0:1 fuel mixture. The turbo is tuned for economy, not power.

The only reason, I think, that mine did okay at the track is because of my all-wheel drive. I built my car for the street, not the track, and my streets can be kinda rough and a bit muddy. I built it for non-ideal conditions.

I dont have AWD, just RWD and Hard tires (also setup for street, I didnt even track test this car). I think part comes from how driveable your car is as well, low driveability will lower times quite a bit.

[07CobaltGirl]

As a side-line, post-race observer of the Barely Street Legal League, I have to admit I like the story idea as well. Although, CobaltGirl is right, the BSLL did get a bit... wild... by the end. (For the record, I just finished reading the Barely Street Legal League thread, and it's re-inspired my desire to write again.)

Still, nice to see that my mighty 2.2 liter, turbocharged beast didn't blow up on the track, or end up last. Also glad that in the muddy conditions, I had the right setup. Four wheel drive, mated to an automatic four speed. Both hands on the wheel and no wheel spin! I'd considered a manual, but the comfort and drivability boost of the automatic got the better of me. I'm just glad to see that this time, I built something that appears to know what "competitive" is supposed to mean.

Makes me wonder, though, who's going to run out of gasoline on the way to the next race.

Yes, but the "wild" factor mostly came from us, the participants. Strop actually made a great storyline for the series. It was sensible, believable, entertaining, and absolutely realistic (save for the animal personalities). He was quite accommodating of our "side stories", which of course got completely out of control. That was part of what made it so much fun, but I think strop would have appreciated a little less color. It had sex, drugs, drinking, illegal activities (which were kind of expected), and of course a pair Super Secret Agents pursuing the group around the world (and some Super Mods who helped protect us from them). I mean, come on, we completely destroyed the track and surrounding areas at the Green Hell. And by "destroyed", I mean missiles, fires, broken roads, numerous crashed race and police cars, airplanes, etc. Wasn't there a tank or two also? hahaha

FYI, I've already built my car for BSLL 2. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!

[Madrias]

I've built several that would meet the rules for BSLL 1, so I'm ready. I just have to choose which one and build a character. Just have to decide how crazy a character to be, as I'm not certain the BSLL would quite be a race run by perfectly sane individuals. That, and internal backstory (though none has been published here) of Storm Automotive gives a mixed bag of characters. Though I dare say that the animal personalities from Strop's crew just added to the insanity in a good way, reminding everyone that this is not a wholly serious event, even when the t-rex crap hit the helicopter's rotors, to upscale a saying appropriately.

[strop]

Awwww hell yeah, best of the rest (and by rest, I mean, not sporting >200 hp). I think I have like 150 or something in a FWD. Now to cross my fingers and hope the car holds up under consumer scrutiny... It is a little bare and the panels a little flimsy but it has everything there, at least...

P.s. to those of you who mentioned it, I do plan to get another BSLL done. Unfortunately when I run something like that, even with Cen's help to keep track of everything (because I can't handle it otherwise!) It takes up ALL of my free time for 2 months or so, and I can't afford that right now I don't even have time to work on my own company backstory at this stage.

I imagine I won't get a good slot until sometime next year, which, by then, hopefully nothing else will need rebalancing as the last few months have played havoc on fuel economy and outputs! So the delay will have a twofold purpose.

That said I found pyrlixs blurb vastly amusing, and am very happy with more of the same.

[JasonPoland]

Only a few cars are missing, and nature brought the first test to them, as it started to rain. And it was raining alot, the once dry dirt road to the Test site, became a muddy rallye track, all the parked cars got wet, and some of them had water dripping inside the cabin. Not the best conditions to show the good sides of the car.
All of the sudden you could hear someone yelling, it was slavic, and it was very angry. "KURWA MAC!!", the driver of the PolMot was yelling. He got stuck in the new rallye track, but thankfully the Z220 driver had a towline in his huge boot and helped the poor PolMot driver out of the dirt.

Is that a reference to my file exporting issues?

FIL vs Austin...shot clock cheese. That ZSD will be untouchable...21 second lead...
The difference between 6th SCM FATI & 13th PolMot is around 5 seconds, so relatively close. Camarada standing at 18th lost only 2 seconds to 14th Strom so this may be interesting and the different tracks may flip this order upside down.

[UltimateBMWfan]

/nick UltimateBMWFa

Also, jeez. 17? Not bad for a car that is supposed to be mediocre.

[Absurdist]

8th! Not bad for 82.3 horses.

Is it weird if I keep accidentally misreading strops car as the Belford paddlewagon?
Probably...

That write up was really good to read.

[strop]

lol the paddlewagon.

I just came across one of those jalopnik articles explaning, in an excerpt from a memoir, how Subaru became AWD. Apparently Subarus used to be FWD and had pretty solid snow performance because they had more weight directly over the driving wheels, and it was from there that they were approached to make an AWD spinoff from one of their wagons, which they did so using Nissan parts (in 1988).

The engineering thought process was coincidentally very similar to my own, making the Belford Prolewagon a bit of a Subaru prototype