Vehicle Degradation and Maintenance

[jnoble]

Hi Everyone,

I figure this has been on the minds of many members, however, I have not found any truly conclusive results through my search. On to the question; when should one perform maintenance on their vehicles? When condition reaches "Normal", "Worn", or "Bad"? What about, when is it time to buy a new engine or new body?

I have read numerous posts about the presumption that, performing maintenance too frequently, i.e., when oil, for instance, is anything but "Excellent", actually causing accelerated wear. Is this true? Does anyone have any conclusive evidence? I know in the past, some intrepid members have done in depth research on the subject for previous GT entries. Does anything like this exist for GT7?

Long story short, it would be cool to have a handle on the algorithm, in order to get the most out our cars, long term. Let us know if you have any data to point to, that would go against the "common sense" strategy of performing maintenance, any time conditions are anything but excellent.

Thanks!

If this has been discussed to death, and I just couldn't find it, please point us in the right direction. I would love to have the time to figure this out on my own, but alas, I'm a working dude with a family and can only squeeze in a few hours here and there if I'm lucky, lol.

 

[TumeK5]

I don't think the oil absolutely needs to be changed once it goes to normal, it reaches that state rather fast anyway. The only real drawback of running with normal oil is you lose a bit of power, and even more once you get to the worn state.

 

[BangsMcCoy]

Long story short, it would be cool to have a handle on the algorithm, in order to get the most out our cars, long term. Let us know if you have any data to point to, that would go against the "common sense" strategy of performing maintenance, any time conditions are anything but excellent.

I don’t have a handle on how they determine all that, I just avoid all that wondering, hassle and cost altogether by making sure I use the Retry -> Car Settings feature after every race so that I never put any miles or wear on my cars and they’re always as good as new. Never have to worry about oil changes, maintenance of performance loss. Not sure if this is possible in Sport Mode or lobbies though as I never do those.

However, if you are one of those that like to see how many miles you’ve put on your cars then this isn’t for you, and I wish you good luck.

 

[Arkseven]

I don’t have a handle on how they determine all that, I just avoid all that wondering, hassle and cost altogether by making sure I use the Retry -> Car Settings feature after every race so that I never put any miles or wear on my cars and they’re always as good as new. Never have to worry about oil changes, maintenance of performance loss. Not sure if this is possible in Sport Mode or lobbies though as I never do those.

However, if you are one of those that like to see how many miles you’ve put on your cars then this isn’t for you, and I wish you good luck.

Don't you think that going "Retry > Car Settings" in every race is much more of a hassle than just going to GT Auto every ~800km to change oil?

 

[BangsMcCoy]

Don't you think that going "Retry > Car Settings" in every race is much more of a hassle than just going to GT Auto every ~800km to change oil?

No. It takes me like 6 seconds max to do (on PS5) and it prevents more than having to deal with the occasional oil change. It prevents all wear on the car which means never having to do any maintenance in GT Auto, not having to deal with new engines or bodies, or dealing with the irreversible power and performance decreases that come in time from doing repeated maintenance in GT Auto.

 

[LeGeNd-1]

I did tests with this when I was grinding with the script. The cars used were Tomahawk S and Veneno. You can see the full details in my sig but in summary:

It's a 3 step degradation from Excellent > Normal > Worn > Bad.

Oil - the steps are roughly at 500 / 1000 / 1500 km (although I have seen that if you overrev the car frequently you can get the first step as soon as 200 km). You can lose up 2.4-3% power at bad state.

Engine - 5000 / 13000 / 20000 km (may very slightly between cars and how you drive by around 1000 km). You can lose 4-5% power at bad state.

Chassis - 5000 / 15000 / 30000 km (may very slightly between cars and how you drive, the last step I've seen range from 28000 to 32500 km).

In addition to this there is PERMANENT damage that you cannot restore from GT Auto.

Engine - starts at around 11500 km until 35000 km then plateaus. Tiny 0.5-0.7% loss of engine power at worst state.

Chassis - presumably there is permanent damage as well but since the effects are tiny it's hard to quantify.

Presumably buying a new engine/chassis from the Tuning Shop resets this, but I have not tested. Buying a new engine/chassis doesn't reset the odometer so there is a possibility that it doesn't reset the permanent damage and the only way is to buy a new car. Also cars that cannot have permanent engine/chassis upgrades (e.g. bore up, weight reduction) doesn't have a new engine/chassis option anyway so for these you HAVE to buy a new car.

The power loss effects are additive, so if you have a car with bad oil/engine/chassis at 35000 km then you expect to lose around 6.7-8.5% power (slight differences due to horsepower rounding errors).

Honestly for most people you only ever need to worry about changing oil. Most cars rarely get driven to the first step of engine/chassis damage, let alone the permanent damage. If you drive a car that long you could easily afford to buy a new one than worrying about maintenance 👍

Personally, it's a useless feature and I much prefer GT Sport where you don't need to worry about mileage.

 

[Arkseven]

No. It takes me like 6 seconds max to do (on PS5) and it prevents more than having to deal with the occasional oil change. It prevents all wear on the car which means never having to do any maintenance in GT Auto, not having to deal with new engines or bodies, or dealing with the irreversible power and performance decreases that come in time from doing repeated maintenance in GT Auto.

I think it's a bit extreme. You need to drive well over 150.000 km to see a very small impact on performance.

 

[jrbabbitt]

I've only had to overhaul one engine so far, I was using my CLK to much when grinding....

 

[shadow0460]

I've driven several to needing engine rebuild and body restoration. I keep everything in the "excellent" range but I'm absolute trash at this game, so grinding races sees me coming in at the middle of the pack.
Whoa! I think a turtle just passed me up! 🐢

 

[dkstz]

Just yesterday had to do oil+engine+chassis in a M6 I'm using in a league with 6.000 km on it.

Recently had to do the same in an GTR and Supra, but they were at around 7.000 km.

 

[smoothbore12]

My opinion for the car degradation is that isn't a problem, unless we are talking about the 20 million " brides" of LCD .
Changing oil is enough and even with that will always come the point that the you will need to use the " service maintenance " .
And at the end you're always able to buy a new one especially if we're talking about the DLC ones.
Riding a car to the point that need restoration, means that he brought you back way more money than what it cost you on first place.

 

[Chikane_GTR]

I have put over 83K miles on my ultimate grind car so just imagine how many engine rebuilds I have done to it.👍

Handling wise after a body rigidity rebuild handles like new.

 

[jnoble]

Excellent responses to this thread. Main reason I bring this up is, my Aston DP100 VGT (in latest F1 garb), that's done a bunch of grinding on Tokyo and Le Mans, has recently just shifted to Normal for Chassis and Engine.

I've just had the game since March or April of this year, so I missed out on all the good autogrind stuff. I'm aware of the feature, and have tried it, however, I don't have a PS4 controller, and the latest script I downloaded would not play (play button would not react to mouse input, and the script wouldn't start). And I'm not a tech wizard. Anyway, not to derail this thread... on to my point.

I'm driving on an Advanced Sim Racing ASR6 with GTDD Pro, Clubsport V3 pedals, and a McLaren steering wheel for the DP100, with Slip Angle Base Shakers on all four corners running through SimHub, on a 55" TV mounted directly to the rig, with an old 2.5 channel surround sound system with a subwoofer. So I'm getting about as much feedback, as you can get out of GT7, I would think, and I've got a pretty good butt dyno, and real world track experience in a Toyota MR2, MR2 Turbo, and C7 Grand Sport.

I can tell you, without a doubt, that going from Excellent to Normal Chassis rigidity, has had a definite negative effect on the handling of the car. The most notable change has been stability in high speed, straight line braking. The car now shimmies around under hard braking and is displaying slightly more understeer under power than before.

Granted, I have neutered the car to make it compliant with the regulations for the respective races, so the handling was already abnormal, but thought this might make for a good opportunity to present this topic to the community, as I would think some of us might find it relevant to our interests.

So the question still remains, does performing maintenance before a certain interval, result in accelerated degradation of the vehicle, or is this just folklore? I like what Chikane had to say about the fact that his big time grind car handles well after so many miles. I'm an old school GT guy from GT1 all the way through, only missing GT Sport, so I'm familiar with the franchise, it's the only racing game I've ever had, and it's kind of my only hobby, so I'm kind of attached lol. Currently just grinding to buy all the Legends Cars (almost done, save for the big boys), and low mileage used cars, so I'm just a long term addict trying to make the best of my time lol. Thanks for all of your input.