Ah damn, well I’m glad at least the rest of the car was solid. Good luck to the finalists!
I’m not surprised… I suck at both designing and engineering anything post 2006-ish… 
Same
When I looked at your entry, I found it to be a mess, as if it had been hit by a shotgun filled with random fixtures. That alone would have been grounds for the client to pass it up.
And regarding the interior/infotainment mismatches that caused a lot of bins: For ~$60k AMU, you’d expect a car of the era, size and class this round is themed around to have both a premium interior and infotainment system. Also, a simple sat-nav system won’t cut it in this day and age; it does not have the more advanced functionality of a true infotainment suite.
As for what I called “chronic oversteer syndrome”: If a car tends to oversteer, then it’s because the front tires have more grip than the rear tires. You can reduce oversteer by:
- Fitting wider rear tires and/or narrower front tires
- Increasing rear camber angle and/or decreasing front camber angle
- Increasing rear downforce and/or reducing front downforce
- Installing a stiffer sway bar at the front than at the rear
Be warned, though, that the first two of these methods will increase service costs, so use them in moderation.
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If I may butt in: If anybody is using the suspension presets (The Normal and Sports in particular) they will have a serious amount of negative camber on both axles, that is, unless they are solid axles. So working with camber, and even tuning it towards understeer, may in fact reduce suspension service costs; If I remember correctly the -0.3 to 0.3 range on either axle comes with no penalty.
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Regarding the issue of peak power being on (or too close to) the redline, this bit of advice from CSR 123 should prove useful:
In addition, what “redesign your engine” meant was “Don’t make the engine stroke too long for the type of internals you wish to use”.
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Small request, but can you add images to your judging? It really helps us to know what car is being referred to
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He’s going to for the finals, I think. 35ish reviews all with images would take up a lot of space.
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not if you just copy paste images that were already posted here
That’s exactly what I was planning. I even took a photo showing all 10 finalists at once.
As a side note, almost all of the entries I received had over 400 horsepower (with many having over 500), and given that the FG X XR8 and VF Series II SS also had >400 bhp, that’s where I drew the line - anything less powerful would have most likely struggled to stay competitive.
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yes do this please I only have so much brain to work with
Going for cast iron block and head just to be able to colour it bit me in the ass. Well, had a good run nevertheless. GGs to the ones who made it.
A cast-iron block and/or heads don’t just add weight, they also increase emissions. They may be cheaper, for sure, and the former can even be recolored, but they become less useful in later years, as alloy equivalents become more reliable.
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I feel like this is a nod to my exactly 400.2hp motor lmao; 5.6 might not have been enough displacement
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6.2 LS3 in the Commodore SSV Redline made around 406 hp. In the Corvettes they made around 426.
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To clarify, they are not one and the same: VVL (variable valve lift) allows you to set two different cam profiles (one for low RPM and one for high RPM, with the former setting being the lower of the two), while VVT (variable valve timing) constantly adjusts the valve opening and closing intervals for improved power and efficiency. In 2018, VVT is virtually a must-have (even OHV engines can have it) given its benefits, although VVL (on 2v and 4v SOHC/DOHC engines) is optional.
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As said, I only did it for the colouring of the block. No wonder my emission scoring is so high, compared to some builds in the challenge. Thanks for the advice.
I could have gone with other block types and still fit the budget but it is what it is. Good challenge, great experience for me once again.
Since we are discussing details, I am curious what classifies the Hanno suspension as weird? Was it the sway bar delete, or something about the alignment?
Also, you guys seem to like my hybrid car inspiration (or at least the joke), the S400 was the Lexus ATS-V.
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The weird bit about the Hanno’s suspension was that the front spring rates were much stiffer than those at the rear, which causes understeer. Even so, the steering graph below somehow shows a bias towards oversteer - something that is never desirable or advisable even in high-performance cars such as this.
It’s deceptive in this case because an oversteer bias won’t appear as a suggestion or warning until the sportiness drops below 99.5%.
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