Tuner Garages

[CraftyLandShark]

KC Motorsport Lotus Elan S1 E.P. Special
Tuner: CraftyLandShark

Stock GVS Time: 2'19.974
Stock Feel: This car is very poised, steering response is good under throttle and under braking, it's not terribly slow, and even the brakes already seem good.

PA GVS Time: 2'06.514
Parts Applied Feel: All of the best parts were utilized in the tune, and it shows in the time improvement. The car lost a little of its poise, and incorporated a slight snarl. A little bit of power-oversteer is there if you want and the car can slide and maintain control fairly well. Around the bends it still shines, though the default transmission gearing is way to little and I felt as if I was bouncing off the rev-limiter even in some of the cornering sections.

TA GVS Time: 2'00.595
Tuned Feel: The snarl that was added when the parts were applied was muted somwhat, and perfect control came out of it. The transmission gearing was nice but I would have liked to see some individual tuning of the gears as well. The suspension setup seemed a little weird, as the damper settings were soooo soft, but it worked perfectly. Wherever you turn the wheel is exactly where you go in this little convertible, be it under thottle, under braking, or under neither. A very nice tune overall.

Family Cup-GVS-Difficulty 10
A-spec points 189
Competition: Nissan R390 GT1 Road car '98/Dodge Viper GTSR Concept '00/Mercedes SL 65 AMG (R230) '04/Ford GT '02/Cizeta V16T '94
Passed the leader at the second hairpin and never looked back, I love watching replays like this, where a little under powered car thrashes supercars, won with a 6 second lead.

Grade:97

Ahhh I feel better now! LOL ...

The suspension definitely looks strange at the outset. I started relatively stiff and kept having to go softer ... and softer ... and softer ... to keep the car from feeling nervous, and to prevent it from going up at a 45 degree angle anytime it hit curbing any taller than a sheet of notebook paper.

I did mess around a bit at first with the individual gear ratios to try to squeeze a little more low end acceleration out of it, but it turned out that using the default ratios after using the tranny trick and changing the final drive struck the perfect balance between grip, balance and speed. More low end grunt (closer gears down low) would have required a tighter differential to prevent wheelspin, and might have caused understeer as a result. More top end (longer gears up top) and the car began to feel like a jet approaching takeoff speeds since it wouldn't accept a wing. So for the sake of the poor driver who had no rollcage to protect him, I limited top speed to somewhere in the 153mph-ish range. I figure that vintage brain-bucket-style helmet doesn't offer a lot of shock protection

Very comprehensive judging all around, I'm quite impressed!

 

[mustangGT90210]

I know Mafia and MustangGT90210 mentioned something about judging it at some point

I did, but I'm not going to be able to. Time crunch from school. Damned ALL honors classes

You guys do actually know about getting easy money from Capri right? I cant believe you only have 500,000cr maf

I got well over 600 cars, and I buy a lot of used 6.2 mile cars for use later.

Welfare office would be awesome.. or loans! If you dont pay the loan back within 100 days, they take your car!

I think I have 6,000cr...

I am poor, but when I need money, I run the VTC 'Cuda 'round Capri. It's so awesome there, I love it!

 

[CraftyLandShark]

I did, but I'm not going to be able to. Time crunch from school. Damned ALL honors classes


I think I have 6,000cr...

I am poor, but when I need money, I run the VTC 'Cuda 'round Capri. It's so awesome there, I love it!

I know how that can be. It'll be picking up pretty severely for me too here in the next month or two as midterms draw closer and closer, so this may be the last challenge I'm able to be extremely active in, as it looks like even once the semester's over I'll be busy. I'm stuck TA'ing some froshie intro classes over the summer as part of my work-study.

I bet that 'Cuda is a handful on those narrow hairpins! Would be fun as hell powersliding through the apexes though

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Speaking of Capri...

My new baby is being worked out there.

On S1 tires, old oil, something like 220-240hp, no wing... It's getting 2:20 laps with much room to improve. I hope to get to 2:18 on S1s, and sub-2 minute when finished. (Although that much time will be hard to get)

Start guessing what it is. I'll say this: It's supercharged and a Toyota.

 

[Vander]

did I mention it only took 19 lotus championship races to get the elan in red, and then have to settle for no photo uploading

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

Chervrolet Convertible (C1) 1954
Tuner: nd 4 holden spd

Stock GVS Time: 2'29.679
Stock Feel: Very nicely behaved in stock trim, the two-speed tranny is a little hard to get used to as it has so much torque redlining in 1st and so little when you shift to second.

PA GVS Time: 2'02.380* 2'21.859
Parts Applied Feel: The parts applied certainly opened this beast up. Super tail happy under the default tune. The default transmission setting topped out almost immediately so I bumped the auto setting to 20 from 3, that is where the time difference comes from(and it is a HUGE time difference for just setting an auto setting from default). This car has some serious snap oversteer and spin out problems that pop up every now and then.

TA GVS Time: 1'57.493
Tuned Feel: a very nice car overall, the tail comes around nicely through the corners and yet still manages to catch grip when you need it to. The snap oversteer problem was refined and now it only rears its ugly head if a tire leaves the tarmac, and it is certainly not as pronounced as it was before.
This car came along way under tuning though on some tracks you may want to raise the ride height as curbing can give it some problems.

Family Cup-GVS-Difficulty 10
A-spec 189
Competition: Ford Gt '05/Saleen S7 '02/Aude Le Mans quattro '03/Honda NSX-R Prototype LM Road Car '02/Mercedes SLR McLaren '03
never mind there wasn't any competition. 9 second lead across the line

Grade:90

I wish I was doing better, but I'm still doing well. I can't complain and I can't be content. Final round, ready......

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Yikes.

My Elans were green.

EDIT: SPS

 

[CraftyLandShark]

did I mention it only took 19 lotus championship races to get the elan in red, and then have to settle for no photo uploading

Augh! That's gotta be frustrating. No reason you still can't edit the post once you're home to include everything you wanted!

And pursuant to our PM conversation from the other day, I've won several more GTI's and STILL none are red. GAH!

 

[Vander]

I now have them in every color I thin RJ, anyway nd4holdenspd I think you are doing much better. IMO your vette tune is a vast improvement over your Cien that I tested in TC2 and we should still have more judges for this event. . .hopefully.

CLS - that is true, I'll be home before the 16th deadline so I'll edit them in when I get home.

 

[mustangGT90210]

I know how that can be. It'll be picking up pretty severely for me too here in the next month or two as midterms draw closer and closer, so this may be the last challenge I'm able to be extremely active in, as it looks like even once the semester's over I'll be busy. I'm stuck TA'ing some froshie intro classes over the summer as part of my work-study.

I bet that 'Cuda is a handful on those narrow hairpins! Would be fun as hell powersliding through the apexes though

Believe it or not, there's not too much drama in the hairpins...The chicane, well that's another story

Mafs and other guy, in the NTSC version of the game, the autosave can not be fully turned off, it can be set to limited, where it only saves after you buy or sell something. Or you can have it on full and it saves after EVERYTHING. It's rather annoying, you also can't play without a memory card inserted, I tried cost cutting so I could try some stuff, it failed.

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

I now have them in every color I thin RJ, anyway nd4holdenspd I think you are doing much better. IMO your vette tune is a vast improvement over your Cien that I tested in TC2 and we should still have more judges for this event. . .hopefully.

Yeah that CIEN was a speed machine and not one for handling and that's why it did badly. The race car tune is both handling and speed. This challenge around I focused on handling without forgetting speed.

 

[nissan tuner]

TA GVS Time: 2'11.245
Tuned Feel: hmmm. . .still loads of wheelspin, the car requires a lot of finesse in throttle use. I did improve my time, but it took quite a while to get 2 clean laps in a row from this beast. Understeer while braking is very apparent and this merc loves to get dizzy.

getting last place with a comment like that towards the benz is laughable.

vander, it looks like you were only judging the handling of the cars and listed the best to worst in your opinion(i.e. body roll coments).
its about the feel and funfactor of the car, not which car can pull the most G's round a bend

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

It's up to the judge on how he scores and it's not the tuner's place to argue. Other factors may have also effected judging.

 

[nissan tuner]

the benz's negatives outweigh my negatives acorrding to vander. its confusing to understand why im placed behind him its a little contracdicting

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

Similar with my Vette and Grey's Alfa, except his is more of an improvement from default than mine from what I've garnered so his is ranked better so far.

 

[CraftyLandShark]

the benz's negatives outweigh my negatives acorrding to vander. its confusing to understand why im placed behind him its a little contracdicting

Having driven both cars, let me just say this.

It's one thing to take a car like the E-type that's relatively good in stock aspect and slap a few tuning parts on it and add a tiny bit of power. Your E-type is good, yes. With more effort though, if could have handled a good bit more power, and even as it is, it has issues that you could have fixed using a multitude of options that you chose not to use. The parts you did use, like Vander pointed out, weren't really used all that extensively or all that well.

It's another thing to take a car like the Merc that, at the power levels used, has a LOT of known problems, then use every method at your disposal to cure those problems to the greatest extent they can be cured, as Leo did. It probably wasn't the wisest decision to use as much power as he did, and he understands that already. BUT, it's clear that he put a lot of effort and thought into how to use all the options available to him to harness that power, and he did so skillfuly.

So the basic point is this - I'm guessing that not only was it an "improvement over default" issue that garnered you lower scores this time, but an issue of how much perceived effort went into the tuning process. The E-type seemed and felt quickly thrown together, whereas the Merc seemed and felt logically and thoughtfully approached.

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

Having driven both cars, let me just say this.

It's one thing to take a car like the E-type that's relatively good in stock aspect and slap a few tuning parts on it and add a tiny bit of power. Your E-type is good, yes. With more effort though, if could have handled a good bit more power, and even as it is, it has issues that you could have fixed using a multitude of options that you chose not to use. The parts you did use, like Vander pointed out, weren't really used all that extensively or all that well.

It's another thing to take a car like the Merc that, at the power levels used, has a LOT of known problems, then use every method at your disposal to cure those problems to the greatest extent they can be cured, as Leo did. It probably wasn't the wisest decision to use as much power as he did, and he understands that already. BUT, it's clear that he put a lot of effort and thought into how to use all the options available to him to harness that power, and he did so skillfuly.

So the basic point is this - I'm guessing that not only was it an "improvement over default" issue that garnered you lower scores this time, but an issue of how much perceived effort went into the tuning process. The E-type seemed and felt quickly thrown together, whereas the Merc seemed and felt logically and thoughtfully approached.

Ooh that's gotta hurt- ding ding. Don't take it personally nissan tuner.

Edit: Hey Kent, just wanted to know what power your Civic ended up with and what lap times it runs at GVS, so I can compare it to my VW Golf I made. (Yes your Civic seems to be the bench mark now)

 

[Leonidae]

power is still hurting the points I get? ouch.. Oh well, the last three cars should change the tone. I'm not worried of points or how I finish. I just want to know how my creations do against others. True, power helps the Merc a lot, but it also means that it needs a skillful driver, not a button masher. It'll probably end up to MFT as Advanced/Pro level car.

 

[Kent]

Ooh that's gotta hurt- ding ding. Don't take it personally nissan tuner.

Edit: Hey Kent, just wanted to know what power your Civic ended up with and what lap times it runs at GVS, so I can compare it to my VW Golf I made. (Yes your Civic seems to be the bench mark now)

Thanks.
My Civic ran 2'09.6 at grand valley in final form. I ran it with a Stage 2 weight reduction and about 266hp (as displayed in the replay).

The car was a beast!
PS. I'm very happy to hear it is something of a standard.

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

Excellent, I also put a race computer on yours just to see (I still have it from TCV2), not sure what weight reduction it had- I'll look into it, but at the moment my Golf V GTI can run a little quicker without any downforce but it weighs a little less than the version of yours I tested and has much more torque with only a couple extra horsepower. Yours still feels better to drive but my Golf is that little quicker and still really good handling for an FF. I'm proud of my first good FF tune, and learnt a lot from it. It may end up being posted at Aussie Tuners some time for those interested in driving it.

PS- I know that the Golf V GTI is a really good base car to work with when it comes to FF, but I wanted a good looking good handling car to learn on in case I accidentally bought one of those FFs that are really dodgy and can hardly be made good.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Good FF=Honda. /discussion.

I personally like Integras.

 

[nd 4 holden spd]

Yeah but the Golf is a good one too, actually a fair few Volkswagen FFs are good. They should have a Honda v Volkswagen FF showdown

Man I can't wait to see results for the rest of this Vintage Challenge.

 

[Vander]

getting last place with a comment like that towards the benz is laughable.

vander, it looks like you were only judging the handling of the cars and listed the best to worst in your opinion(i.e. body roll coments).
its about the feel and funfactor of the car, not which car can pull the most G's round a bend

Your jag handled just fine, and it was a fun car to drive, but they all were.

First and Foremost this is a tuning challenge though and your car not only didn't really seem all that different in between the PA and TA sections it felt underdone to me. That may have been what you were going for, but when you leave off things like FC transmission's and BBC's not to mention barely touching the suspension settings it; then, perhaps you should leave some kind of explanation as to why you did.

My judging results are my opinions and they were based on a lot of testing, I only wrote up the grand valley specs, but all of the cars were tested on Laguna Seca, Nurburgring, Trial Mountain, New York, and Citta. I ranked them how I ranked them because that's how I felt about the cars.

 

[mafia_boy]

Just to change topic for a second, who was judging the '64-'72 category??

Anyone??

 

[mustangGT90210]

Just to change topic for a second, who was judging the '64-'72 category??

Anyone??

I think that all happens after the pre-63 stuff. I don't know if I can do it because my car is in there, but I should have the time by the time that comes around.

 

[Greycap]

To my understanding, the pre-63 and the 1964-1972 are judged simultanoeusly, i.e. now. It's just that the older ones have got more attention but both classes should be done by the 16th February.

 

[mustangGT90210]

To my understanding, the pre-63 and the 1964-1972 are judged simultanoeusly, i.e. now. It's just that the older ones have got more attention but both classes should be done by the 16th February.

I thought they were done at different times, seeing as not a soul has even mentioned the latter category untill today

 

[CraftyLandShark]

They're both happening right now - I talked with STIdriver via PM and he says he's working on 64-72, and I think Vander is as well.

 

[dimplz]

two great drivers with very good comments about the cars they test

 

[Vander]

I'm taking a break for the day, trying to unlock cars in burnout paradise city, but I'm starting my 64-72 testing in the morning, and hopefully will be done by sunday or monday.