I go off of feel. When it starts feeling sloppy, or more over-steer than what I consider to be normal, I perform Chassis Rigidity.
I second this notion.
I just perform the chassis rebuild when I buy one from the UCD before I upgrade it or mess with the tune set-up. It seems way easier to tune if I just do that 1st. Even in low cars... But particularly in high performance, or antique cars.
I think if you tune it BEFORE a chassis rebuild, in some cars, you might not have a problem with that. There ARE people who never rebuild chassis, I believe, and that could explain it. Then actually rebuilding the chassis might actually make your tuning set-up somehow seem "off" afterward.
Because the #1 indication I see for the need for a chassis rebuild, is when it can best be described as... the car starts handling as if my tuning set-ups changed - except I haven't changed them. It's like the car "forgets" what tuning I set-up on it. Kind of gets sloppy... & just won't do what it used to.
Some examples would be: That a car might start getting unstable during cornering when it used to be solid through a particular turn. Or it might start feeling loose in the rear in situations where the rear used to stay put pretty well. Or you might have to start correcting steering after landing after a "jump" (say on Cape Ring or Eiger), when before the car would land tight & continue.
Also, I've done testing with my cars I've used for grinding. I don't have it in me right now at least to go into the details of the experimenting I've done, listing all the cars & the races I've put them in and when I did the rebuilds, etc etc. But believe me, my testing was bordering on a little obsessive. haha.
The conclusions I came to are this:
1st, high performance and antique cars seem to benefit from more chassis rebuild sooner than other cars.
Basically, you can assume that the more credits it costs to rebuild the chassis, the more often it will probably need it!
And the older the car is (year), the more often it will probably need it.
2nd, the need for chassis rebuild seems to hinge more on usage of the vehicle than actual miles traveled in it. Bumping, scraping, crashing, hard cornering, wrenching a car around, lots of lurching & hard braking seems to be what "wears it out" more than just say, plain driving it X amount of km/miles.
Basically, if you're using the car in races for say grinding, where you don't stay in a pack of cars for long, so there's limited bumpin' & scrapin', & you get out in front early on & you don't have to push the car hard, & it's an easy drive to win... then the chassis won't get worn out as fast as if you're using the car in "closer" races, where you're in a pack of cars with a lot of bump & scrape... or you're really pushing the car hard around corners. And especially if you're crashing the car (into walls or rolling it over or whatnot). And I'm less sure about this - but I'd even put "jumps" & "landings" into it as well. If you're doing tracks with jumps & bumps that may factor in a bit as well.
Those 2 things I'm 99.9% certain about. I leave .1% because obviously I haven't tested every car in the game - I don't even own every car in the game... So it's impossible to know exactly how much age, or performance, or hard cornering, or crashes, etc, each factor into it compared to each other. I just know they all DO seem to factor in... Just not sure how much weight each matters in the equation, if that makes sense.
I only know that actual high impact crashes seem to weigh more in the equation than anything else.
And the next biggest factor seems to be the performance level of the car. (Just as an example of cars I've experimented with... a Lambourgini seems to be more vulnerable to chassis restoration need than say a Nissan BE-1.)
The other conclusion I came to... I'm only about 60% sure about this one:
That the car being from the NEW dealership doesn't seem to make a difference. That the car being a "gift car" with no miles doesn't seem to make a difference. So it doesn't make a difference whether you get the car from the UCD, the new dealership, or win the car with 0km on it. The only difference that makes is that when you buy from the used UCD, the car immediately benefits from a chassis rebuild straight out of the UCD. But once you perform that first chassis rebuild... the car is then no more or less likely to need a chassis rebuild after driving it than any other car purchased new or won w/ 0km as a prize.
I'm not totally sure about this one only because I haven't done specific experiments comparing the same car purchased from the new dealership compared with the same car purchased from the UCD with miles on it. So without that test, I just can't be sure.
I'm just saying it seems to me it doesn't make a difference, or at least not as large a difference, as the other things. Previously, I'd suspected that new cars seemed to need chassis rebuild less. But I've started to change my mind about that, & I'm more inclined to think it doesn't matter, at least not much. Or maybe it's a cumulative thing, and it takes high mileage for it to really be a major factor. (Like say maybe if you buy a car from UCD with 70,000km on it - maybe that would make a difference. But not much difference if you buy it with just 15,000km on it compared to a 0km car.)
One thing I'm completely unsure about is ... what the limit of HOW BAD a car can get if you never do a chassis rebuild. The fact that some people never do a chassis rebuild says to me, though, that there's probably a limit to how bad it gets. That it plateaus, and if you can tune the car & drive it at that limit, maybe you can get away with never rebuilding the chassis. In other words, the car gets "worn", but then that's it - it's as bad as it will ever get.
And one thing I'm almost completely sure about is that "damage on" makes no difference to needing a chassis rebuild. Racing in races with "damage on" (light or heavy), and taking damage in those races, doesn't seem to wear the chassis any more than crashing the car in an Aspec race or with damage off. I haven't done any specific experiments with this. But the fact that if you race one race with damage on, and take on damage, the minute you start another race, that "handling difference" from the damage, disappears when you start in another race... says to me it doesn't make any difference.
I know a LOT of people confuse taking damage during a race and having the car "handle poorly", confusing that with the car handling poorly when it needs a chassis rebuild. It's 2 TOTALLY different issues!! The difference is, when you race in a race with damage on - the handling starts feeling WAY different after the crash
DURING THAT RACE. When you crash multiple times in a race (with damage off), and it effects the chassis - it will NOT be noticeable DURING the race that you've crashed in... you will notice it only after starting another race. And the handling differences you feel will be FAR LESS than the handling differences you experience from taking damage in a race with "damage on".
The 2 issues are completely separate issues. (I wanted to make this clear because in other threads people have started arguing about "damage on" as evidence for their views on chassis rebuilds... and it's IRRELEVANT. One has nothing to do with the other.)
An easy way to experiment yourself with chassis rebuilding... is to take ONE car (with one tuning set-up - don't change that during the experiment of course), well over-powered for the race so you can win easily, and use it for grinding one particular track/race. (This way you're making $ while doing your experiment.
) Over the course of time (could take awhile), keep track of your race times, & how many races. When your times consistently start going down, make a note of it. When the car seems to start behaving differently... then do the chassis rebuild and immediately go back to that race and see if it feels different again, and note your times. After that, try deliberately bumping & scraping & crashing during the races you're grinding. Make note of your times again, and see if the times start decreasing or the handling starts feeling different after less races than before.
In other words, don't take my word for it... Go ahead & try it yourself if you want proof.
