Nicely done Pyrlix!
Romanov, who had not bothered to introduce their car before the first race are satisfied enough. The engine of the Glasnost’ is too weak to allow serious racing, but there is speed in the car. Still, times are rough for Romanov and the rain and the mud are not helping anyone, really. We’re looking forward to the next race and to be judged by the jury, after all, Romanov is building cars for the people, not for race tracks.
As a side-line, post-race observer of the Barely Street Legal League, I have to admit I like the story idea as well. Although, CobaltGirl is right, the BSLL did get a bit… wild… by the end. (For the record, I just finished reading the Barely Street Legal League thread, and it’s re-inspired my desire to write again.)
Still, nice to see that my mighty 2.2 liter, turbocharged beast didn’t blow up on the track, or end up last. Also glad that in the muddy conditions, I had the right setup. Four wheel drive, mated to an automatic four speed. Both hands on the wheel and no wheel spin! I’d considered a manual, but the comfort and drivability boost of the automatic got the better of me. I’m just glad to see that this time, I built something that appears to know what “competitive” is supposed to mean.
Makes me wonder, though, who’s going to run out of gasoline on the way to the next race.
Hmmmm and i thought that a miserable 90hp were enough for the challenge… ha ha
So, it’s Gin time…directly from the bottle…with a straw…
[quote=“8bs”]Hmmmm and i thought that a miserable 90hp were enough for the challenge… ha ha
So, it’s Gin time…directly from the bottle…with a straw…[/quote]
To be honest. I think anything between 85-120hp is totally acceptable. I do not care much about racing in this challenge, these are in a way supposed to be multi purpose vehicles. IMO not race track monsters. No average customer will buy a car because it is so fast around a track, people buy vehicles because they are economical and practical for their purposes. Especially since the cars in this challenge are supposed to be cheapish as well. To have adequate power in a car is to be able to go 160-180 km/h and that good enough for daily use considering speed limits. I know that challenge includes a race, but I never cared about that part much.
Very true, Tycondero. My choice of 122 horsepower was just based on what I could squeeze out of it while keeping it economical. That was the most horsepower I could make on Regular Unleaded with a 15.0:1 fuel mixture. The turbo is tuned for economy, not power.
The only reason, I think, that mine did okay at the track is because of my all-wheel drive. I built my car for the street, not the track, and my streets can be kinda rough and a bit muddy. I built it for non-ideal conditions.
Also I think that adding/doing other races is largely irrelevant. We already know that Trackpaduser’s car is going to win every race judging the time advantage. Only place 2 and 3, 7, 8 and 9 seems to be competitive amongst eachother and might have slightly different ranking per track.
While I will very probably get all 4 points in the racing, my 1.0 comfort, crappy reliability and very high costs will probably get me 0 points in the consumer rating.
But there isn’t only one winner of points in racing, and it will definitively mess up the overall rankings at the end, which is the whole point of this challenge.
And appart from saying that I will end up 1st, Leo and Trollercoaster 2nd-3rd (unknown order though), its hard to guess how many points the others will get.
[quote=“Madrias”]Very true, Tycondero. My choice of 122 horsepower was just based on what I could squeeze out of it while keeping it economical. That was the most horsepower I could make on Regular Unleaded with a 15.0:1 fuel mixture. The turbo is tuned for economy, not power.
The only reason, I think, that mine did okay at the track is because of my all-wheel drive. I built my car for the street, not the track, and my streets can be kinda rough and a bit muddy. I built it for non-ideal conditions.[/quote]
I dont have AWD, just RWD and Hard tires (also setup for street, I didnt even track test this car). I think part comes from how driveable your car is as well, low driveability will lower times quite a bit.
[quote=“Madrias”]As a side-line, post-race observer of the Barely Street Legal League, I have to admit I like the story idea as well. Although, CobaltGirl is right, the BSLL did get a bit… wild… by the end. (For the record, I just finished reading the Barely Street Legal League thread, and it’s re-inspired my desire to write again.)
Still, nice to see that my mighty 2.2 liter, turbocharged beast didn’t blow up on the track, or end up last. Also glad that in the muddy conditions, I had the right setup. Four wheel drive, mated to an automatic four speed. Both hands on the wheel and no wheel spin! I’d considered a manual, but the comfort and drivability boost of the automatic got the better of me. I’m just glad to see that this time, I built something that appears to know what “competitive” is supposed to mean.
Makes me wonder, though, who’s going to run out of gasoline on the way to the next race.[/quote]
Yes, but the “wild” factor mostly came from us, the participants. Strop actually made a great storyline for the series. It was sensible, believable, entertaining, and absolutely realistic (save for the animal personalities). He was quite accommodating of our “side stories”, which of course got completely out of control. That was part of what made it so much fun, but I think strop would have appreciated a little less color. It had sex, drugs, drinking, illegal activities (which were kind of expected), and of course a pair Super Secret Agents pursuing the group around the world (and some Super Mods who helped protect us from them). I mean, come on, we completely destroyed the track and surrounding areas at the Green Hell. And by “destroyed”, I mean missiles, fires, broken roads, numerous crashed race and police cars, airplanes, etc. Wasn’t there a tank or two also? hahaha 
FYI, I’ve already built my car for BSLL 2. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!
I’ve built several that would meet the rules for BSLL 1, so I’m ready. I just have to choose which one and build a character. Just have to decide how crazy a character to be, as I’m not certain the BSLL would quite be a race run by perfectly sane individuals. That, and internal backstory (though none has been published here) of Storm Automotive gives a mixed bag of characters. Though I dare say that the animal personalities from Strop’s crew just added to the insanity in a good way, reminding everyone that this is not a wholly serious event, even when the t-rex crap hit the helicopter’s rotors, to upscale a saying appropriately.
Awwww hell yeah, best of the rest (and by rest, I mean, not sporting >200 hp). I think I have like 150 or something in a FWD. Now to cross my fingers and hope the car holds up under consumer scrutiny… It is a little bare and the panels a little flimsy but it has everything there, at least…
P.s. to those of you who mentioned it, I do plan to get another BSLL done. Unfortunately when I run something like that, even with Cen’s help to keep track of everything (because I can’t handle it otherwise!) It takes up ALL of my free time for 2 months or so, and I can’t afford that right now 
I don’t even have time to work on my own company backstory at this stage.
I imagine I won’t get a good slot until sometime next year, which, by then, hopefully nothing else will need rebalancing as the last few months have played havoc on fuel economy and outputs! So the delay will have a twofold purpose.
That said I found pyrlixs blurb vastly amusing, and am very happy with more of the same.
[quote=“pyrlix”]
Only a few cars are missing, and nature brought the first test to them, as it started to rain. And it was raining alot, the once dry dirt road to the Test site, became a muddy rallye track, all the parked cars got wet, and some of them had water dripping inside the cabin. Not the best conditions to show the good sides of the car.
All of the sudden you could hear someone yelling, it was slavic, and it was very angry. “KURWA MAC!!”, the driver of the PolMot was yelling. He got stuck in the new rallye track, but thankfully the Z220 driver had a towline in his huge boot and helped the poor PolMot driver out of the dirt.[/quote]
Is that a reference to my file exporting issues?
[quote=“pyrlix”]
http://i.imgur.com/v0RuabR.png[/quote]
FIL vs Austin…shot clock cheese. That ZSD will be untouchable…21 second lead…
The difference between 6th SCM FATI & 13th PolMot is around 5 seconds, so relatively close. Camarada standing at 18th lost only 2 seconds to 14th Strom so this may be interesting and the different tracks may flip this order upside down.
/nick UltimateBMWFa
Also, jeez. 17? Not bad for a car that is supposed to be mediocre.
8th! Not bad for 82.3 horses.
Is it weird if I keep accidentally misreading strops car as the Belford paddlewagon?
Probably…
That write up was really good to read.
lol the paddlewagon.
I just came across one of those jalopnik articles explaning, in an excerpt from a memoir, how Subaru became AWD. Apparently Subarus used to be FWD and had pretty solid snow performance because they had more weight directly over the driving wheels, and it was from there that they were approached to make an AWD spinoff from one of their wagons, which they did so using Nissan parts (in 1988).
The engineering thought process was coincidentally very similar to my own, making the Belford Prolewagon a bit of a Subaru prototype 
28th of June 1986
The statesmen were pleased by the Top 10 results of the last Race, they were amazed how much performance the manufactors got out of their tight budget. But they want to gather more about the real track performance and planned to head to a world famous race track in germany - more precisely the Nordschleife. That also was quite a challenge for the cars, as they had to drive about 3000km, pass 3 borders and get heavily checked on the Inner German border in Eisenach. Also the convoy started to split up after the 2nd fuel stop in 3 different groups as some drivers were too annoyed about the often re-fuel stops on the journey. The Sabre GT, Austin and Polmot grouped up while the ZSD was the lone wolf far behind.
Yes the ZSD… the statemen were pleased by the trackperformance, and one decided to join the driver of the ZSD on the journey to the Nordschleife. The poor guy had to put on ear protection and take some pillows from the hotel to have altest some comfort in that car. On the 2nd fuel stop, which was -thanks to the ZSD- just after 520km, the statemen decided to take a ride with the Prolewagon and changed to the Z220 while they were checked up in Eisenach.
Upon arriving in the nice village of Müllenbach , which is next to the Norschleife, the soviet politician stated, that both the Prolewagon and Z220 were pretty good cars, while the Z220 was more comfortable, it lacked the nice sound of the V6 engine, but also complained that Belford decided to put in this complex V6 inside of their car, he was a real fan of the small OHV Pushrod, as he is able to fix it with almost any tool he has in his tool bag. Which only contains hammers, one spanner and a single screwdriver.
But he noticed that 3 cars were still missing… the FIL Perestroika, ZSD Vroom and Strom Travill. They decided to postpone the race 2 days after their arrival, IF they ever arrive. And they did arrive, in the middle of the night and woke up everyone. As all 3 of them were on a truck-trailer as they broke down on the Journey or ran out of fuel… The statemen were really angry at the driver of the ZSD, as he apparently forgot to stop for fuel and not using his brain. Also they were not pleased that he Perestroika and Travill were delayed by a small mechanical problem, because that leads to bad reputation of reliable and good soviet products.
On the following morning they decided to repair the cars and top-up the fuel on everyone car and make a footwalk around the track.
And today is the race-day… after a in total 7 day journey, which consisted 2 days of driving and 5 days or preparing and waiting they finally can race again.
Here they are - the results!
Standings after R2:
I know you’re all laughing about the tracktimes of my car but I will show you!
“Apparently mud all over the intercooler is not good for the engine’s performance. That, and the lifter slap in the engine, it’s fine if you don’t redline it too much. She’s not built entirely for the track, and the automatic likes to prove that, but she’ll go just the same.” he said, making light of the fact that his car had broken down on the trip there.
After Nordschleife, however, the automatic quickly became the reason for many curses flung about inside the cab of the Travill. “Don’t downshift at the redline, you stupid transmission! That’s not good!” He was quickly growing tired of seeing the tach pointing in the red, knowing that was what caused the ticky-lifters and was likely to cause more problems. However, he had to admit, the 30 miles per gallon seemed to be holding up rather well, despite the transmission trying defiantly to trash the engine.
“Maybe the mechanical oil pump wasn’t the best idea. Maybe I should have used fuel injection instead of the trusty four-barrel. Should I have used pushrods? Did I try too hard to make the car efficient and not enough of a race car. Or worse, what if I made it too much of a race car and I’m going to kill it when it comes time for the reviews. That’d be just like Storm Automotive, to try to build the perfect compromise and get the worst of both worlds.” he grumbled to himself, masked by the noise in the cabin as he limped the car off of the track, making another note to clean the intercooler and the radiator before the next trip. Oh, and check the oil and coolant levels to make sure they’re full this time. And it wouldn’t hurt to fix that dodgy headlight, either.
(Yes, I do know nothing I do here can influence the events in the story, but it’d be something likely done by anyone who had a significant enough breakdown to need a tow truck.)
Not a bad result, for a 135hpish car that is clearly lacking in the speed department.
That being said, Leo’s results are a bit funny. I’m fairly sure he should have 30 points and be 3rd in the standings!
