[ARM] Automation RestoMod Chapter 16: Soul on Fire [CONCLUSION]

[alen.alic1983]

Automation RestoMod Chapter 16

Valentino Babooni

Meet Valentino Babooni, an entrepreneur, wild-hearted man who just happens to be the heir of Babooni Inc, a company dealing with growing and exporting bananas. Valentino likes finer things in life, such as fancy mansions and top dollar cars to name a few, but he also has a very rugged and manly side as he loves to get his hands dirty in spare time working on his prized possession, the 964.
Valentino owns two cars now, cruising and travelling to meetings in a well appointed W140 S-class Brabus 7.3 while posing and seeking his adrenalin fix in a 964 Porsche 911 Turbo S. Valentino loves to travel to Nurburgring twice a year to stretch his and his car’s muscles. To him, it is an event he treasures most.
He chose the 964 for it’s analogue feel since he is more than a capable driver and enjoys exploring car limits that do not control his actions in any way. He is very old school in that way and prizes driving feel and emotion over raw power. In his mind, power is nothing without control, so the 964 has only a slight power upgrade, with more serious work done to use the available power in best way possible.

Valentino

Valentino's Cars

Alfa Romeo GTV6

The Babooni Alfa has a bit less of a happy end though. The car bought new in 1985 was sold in 1987 and has disappeared ever since. There was nothing nostalgic felt for that car by Babooni senior so there was no trace of the car after sale.
Valentino remembers that dad loved to keep the car clean and tidy, showing human affection to the car. It had a stock 12-valve 2.5 V6 „Busso“ engine, to this day considered to be one of the finest and best sounding V6 engines ever created by man. However, as unremarkable as it might have been to Babooni senior, it is this car that Valentino whishes he had in his posession again.
The GTV6 is what triggered his love of old analogue metal and his fondest memoroes related to his father and their evening drives through the hills of Italy from Portino to Castelleto in the Alfa Romeo GTV6, the memory of every gear shift and „Busso“ engine noise while revving close to the redline. It is this car that sparked a fire in his heart burning ever since.

Alfa GTV6 2.5

2020

Valentino gets a phone call from a family friend about a resurfaced GTV6. Upon asking for details, the VIN number matches the exact car Babooni family used to own! However, upon inspecting the car, a different picture presents itself.
It is obvious that the car has been sitting in the back of a barn for decades, as it lies flat, plagued with rust. There are some glass elements missing, a few cracks here and there. Bumpers are gone, which makes sense as the car is fitted with a rollcage. It is obvious that their GTV6 was turned into a track-car. Some of the interior is missing, and a few dash lights are not illuminating what was once a very angular and quirky interior in true Alfa style.
There is also some damage on the outside as well, one side missing the headlights, while other has them just about falling out. Under the hood, there is a lot of surface rust on engine components, but the car features ITB setup with racing inlets as well as racing manifolds with no mufflers or cat to be seen.
This car is a mess, obviously used to be stripped of good and valuable parts as the GTV6 approaches a cult status and whole cars as well as parts skyrocket in value.
Valentino, being a passionate Babooni as well as a rational person sees an opportunity here. If he gives this car a chance and get it to run again, he will get a piece of nostalgia he was missing all these years, and at the same time revive an Italian cult classic. It is a win win situation!
To him, this would be a weekend car, but what do you think Valentino needs for the weekends? Does he want a full restoration to original spec, a light restomod, a serious restomod, sleeper… He has no concrete goal, but the car must pass the MOT and get registered for road use but also have a bit of cool factor to it.
He decides to purchase back the rust bucket and start outsourcing companies to do the dirty (rusty) jub.

Contemporary Reality

RULES

Valentino loves classic and creative as well. The key factor is execution. What you do is up to you, revising the classic or replacing it with modern solutions. Make sure it reflects what you are building. You can also remove the interior all together if you want, but some elements resembling one are very welcome.

All mods that are used to create this bucket of rust are from Steam Workshop and all of them are encouraged to be used in this challenge without use of mods from different locations.

VARIOUS STYLES AND RULES OF MODIFYING (CHASSIS/BODY):
CLASSIC RESTORATION

If you want to restore the car as original as possible (finding original old parts) leave Model and Trim years as they are:
Model: 1985
Trim: 1985

RESTOMOD

If you want to restore and modify with modern parts:
Model: 1985
Trim: 2020

FROM THE GROUND UP (Ring Brothers style)

If you want go through a reimagining and creating something unique and thoroughly modern:
Model: 2020
Trim: 2020

PANEL MATERIAL
Trying to be as realistic as possible here. Partial materials are considered as purchase of individual parts made from different materials. The cost is normalized by sale of original panels. Full material swaps are considered as unique fabrications.

No penalty:

Steel
Partial Aluminum

Penalty 4000AMU:

Treated Steel
Fibre Glass
Aluminum
Partial Carbon Fiber
Carbon Fibre

CHASSIS

Anything other than monocoque is a 3000AMU penalty.

CHASSIS MATERIAL

Stock is (Galvanised Steel)
Different material 2000AMU
If you changed to different chassis then you do not pay aditional penalty for material.

ENGINE PLACEMENT

Stays as is.

FRONT/REAR SUSPENSION

No penalty (Alfa romeo made different types of suspension setups thus is treated as search and find, selling old one and fitting new)

DRIVE TYPE

4x4 Penalty 3000AMU

VARIOUS STYLES AND RULES OF MODIFYING (BUSSO ENGINE)
CLASSIC RESTORATION

If you want to restore the engine as original as possible (finding original old parts) leave family and model years as they are:
Family: 1985
Variant: 1985

RESTOMOD

If you want to restore and modify with modern parts (using the existing block and BUSSO specific heads):
Family: 1985
Variant: 2020

FROM THE GROUND UP

A new engine blueprint or a different engine all together (considered engine swap)
Family: 2020
Variant: 2020

BUSSO V6

If you want to restomod the Busso V6 by swapping heads from a different Busso engine, there will be no penalty:
Possible head configurations for a Busso V6:

• single overhead cam 2 valve per cylinder
• dual overhead cam 4 valve per cylinder

BUSSO V6 engines never utilized VVT or VVL
If you want tu use VVT or VVL then it would be considered a different (non-BUSSO) head swap. In that case you can use any setup you desire including VVT or VVL. Penalty for a non-BUSSO head swap: 1500AMU

BORE and STROKE

You are free to bore and stroke the engine as you desire within VARIANT CAPACITY, not Family capacity.
Family capacity is set to allow all BUSSO variants of displacement (except for 2 litre) to be recreated from variant capacity.

If you change FAMILY YEAR to anything other than 1985, it is considered an engine swap.
Engine swap penalty 3000AMU.

ADVANCED CAR TRIM AESTHETIC SETTING
These are the only settings you CAN modify:

ENGINE POSITION:
Position Z
Rotation Y

WHEELS:
Wheel Concave
Rim Center Offset
Brake Offset
Wheel Offset (2000 penalty, free if chosen to swap panel material for 4000 penalty)

TIRES:
Tyre Wall Curve

SUSPENSION:
Front/Rear Ride Height: Must be an average of 0 (-1.00/1.00 etc.)

BODY:
Chassis Tunnel Size
DO NOT CHANGE any other values in Body section

ENGINE SOUNDS:
Exhaust Sportiness
Intake Sportiness
(these values do reflect in Beam.NG)

MOT REQUIREMENTS

noise limit 50
comfort over 30
emissions below 400 g/kWh (as seen is summary tab)
must have bumpers beyond bodywork
Must run 95 RON max
No RACE parts or SEMI SLICKS
Front and rear italian license plates (original size)

BABOONI REQUIREMENTS

hard limit at 60000AUD
Interior optional

BOTTOM LINE

All cars that pass MOT are considered in competition. When you submit your car I will reply if you passed or failed your MOT. If you failed, I’ll let you know why and what needs to be corrected. You get to fail twice (resend twice) before getting disqualified.

Most interesting contenders will also be driven in Beam.NG for shits and giggles and recorded on video.

CAR file

The massive full-fat potato-burning monster of a car:
ARM16-ORIG-username_-_6_Full_Fat.car (255.5 KB)

The tiny car that could, but potato friendly:
ARM16-PP-username_-_6_Poverty_Plus.car (57.3 KB)

Keep naming conventions as included in the car file.
ARM16-ORIG-username
ARM16-PP-username
These are the carmodel naming conventions depending which file you use.

ARM16-username
This is the naming convention for Engine Family

You can rename the Trim name for the car as you desire. Same goes for Engine variant name.

Make sure that you post some sort of photograph or two or three of your car on this thread so that Valentino becomes intrigued.

Submissions Starting:

June 22nd 2022 12:00 CET

Submissions Ending:

July 11th 2022 12:00 CET

[alen.alic1983]

Ask questions before we solidify the dates.
It is my first anything here so the presentation is poor, but I’m open to any suggestions and will answer questions.

[Texaslav]

Wow, the realism angle is extreme on this. I really think the lighting thing should be toned down; I don’t think many people on these forums have even put dome lights on their cars, or did low/high beam differentiation. Along with the firm interior requirement, we’re getting a higher than normal barrier of entry.

Other notes:

Partial Carbon Fiber means aluminum+CF, not steel+CF. It definitely should not count as keeping the unibody panels.

$60,000 is probably enough for all of the people staying with 1985 trim year to get handmade/lux everything with a good, up-quality engine and all that; and it’s enough for the people moving to 2020 to get a modern lux/lux interior plus tons of driver aids and active suspensions and everything. I a smaller budget would do this challenge well.

[alen.alic1983]

Ok… I’ll be flexible on lighting.
It’s a valid remark regarding partial CF, didn’t really look into it. I’ll change that.
Interior though, I’d like to see at least some effort, since it is available in the model.
60K is the hard limit and anyone going under is only a plus for Babooni’s pockets. After all, there is no specific demand as to what a car should be, so if someone has an idea to fit a 4x4 and lift the thing, they should be able to do so.

[Knugcab]

Crash crash went my potato computer.
Good luck to the rest of you.

[alen.alic1983]

That bad?

[Knugcab]

Yes. But your good work should not be spoiled just because I am too cheap to buy a real computer, so no hard feelings. I’m just staying over this round.

[alen.alic1983]

If others have these complaints I’ll redesign the damn thing.
Simplify it even more

[abg7]

How much would it cost to replace the transmission?

[alen.alic1983]

No cost there. Remember, this is a high value car now with high value parts. Selling the original would negate the penalty in this case.
However, do read about Valentino. He is well off, but his cars are not very high tech so, depends on your planned build I guess.

[cake_ape]

Oh nice, new ARM out! Here’s some constructive criticism, because I fear that this round will not have a huge uptake otherwise…

First off, the car is super well done and looks gorgeous. But therein lies the first problem. If I counted correctly it has 344 fixtures, which is about 300 too much for a base car. From experience, a simpler car is much less frustrating to mod. Nobody wants to spend an hour deleting fixtures just to get a “clean slate” so to speak for a full custom mod job. Having a taillight made up of dozens of individual fixtures, or having all three pedals be separate fixtures are just a few examples of unnecessary clutter in the fixture widget… So as beautiful and impressive as the base car is now, I do suggest keeping it simpler for accessability. This is a moderate level of suggestion.

Speaking of accessability, it is usually best to keep cars as vanilla as possible. Most people do have all mods installed, but there are always a few who do not. But this would not be the first car that relies heavily on mods, so this is just a mild suggestion.

You haven’t provided a naming convention. To make your life easier I do recommend following previous ARM rounds’ naming conventions, and for you to provide the car file with that already set-up (ARM16 - YOURNAMEHERE already as the Model and Family names). But up to you.

This is a strong suggestion: drop the Beam requirement. Many people don’t have Beam and would have zero clue how to tune a car for Beam. There are probably many others (like me) who own Beam, but don’t have a wheel or controller, so only drive with a keyboard. For that reason I have actually not opened Beam in over a year (it’s just not fun on a keyboard), and also have zero clue how to tune for it. Beam is just not something for ARM. So I very strongly suggest you remove Beam as a judging criterion. That said, I have nothing against the cars being driven and a video uploaded, but just for shits and giggles nothing more.

Lastly, the lighting requirements. I do support more realism here - I do usually set up my exterior lights with proper bulbs that illuminate with the appropriate buttons. But interior lighting does take it a bit far in my opinion. And I have never installed a dome light (who looks at the car’s interior roof, ever?). So a moderate suggestion is to drop the interior lighting requirements.

As for the other rules:
45 noise limit is pretty low and would be unreachable for a mildly sporty build - the noise model is kinda broken in the game right now. 50 would be more realistic with a performance intake.
Emissions below 400 - meaning trim emissions? Or engine emissions?

Being able to choose the various levels of modifying (full 1985 / 1985-2020 / full 2020) is an interesting concept that has not been done before and has not been tested for balance. I support this approach and am curious how it’ll play out.

Just my slightly more than two cents. Looking forward to how this works out

[alen.alic1983]

Damn it man, I really wanted to push creativity here as much as possible. Sure, I’ll cut the car down dramatically and leave it unmodded. As far as the lighting goes, that will also be changed.
Better to do the same tried and true than make it too hard for most people.

Good idea with raising limits of loudness and defining a naming convention.

Let me get on demodding the car (a mod body itself )

[alen.alic1983]

I’ve made some corrections and included a stripped out version of the body as well. Original is the full fat experience, the second one is almost stripped of all mods and complete interior.

[Lanson]

Lately the Beam thing is interesting. Assuming it exports and then imports correctly (sometimes doesn’t), I find that Beam’s interpretation of Automation these days is very, very good as in accurate to what Automation is saying about the car.

That said, the same things were brought up in QFC (no Beam), and while it isn’t to my preference, I understand the ask and reason for it.

[alen.alic1983]

I also find the setups export quite accurately to Beam.NG. This used to be an issue, but the updates have made this much closer now.

[Edsel]

In my opinion, I do think a bit of testing in Beam is okay. It can help provide a different perspective on the car, and can draw attention to parts of the setup that you wouldn’t have noticed (e.g. how the turbolag is more/less noticeable than you thought it’d be) or weren’t paying attention to (e.g. how heavy the car is).

That said, in challenges like these Beam should still remain, at most, a very minor part of judging. And in the event that Automation and Beam disagree (e.g. the Automation graphs predict understeer, but the Beam export oversteers heavily), side with Automation.

[alen.alic1983]

Ofcourse, that is why it is limited to top three pics, to help round off the cars and give them a different dimension.

[alen.alic1983]

Did you try the new model?

[Knugcab]

Yes. Did not work. On the other hand, I guess that most people have better computers than me, so…

[alen.alic1983]

12 hours until rules have been established.
Speak your piece if you have it.