The brakes are super cheap, but they still work. Balanced very well and very low brake fade. Cheap stuff still works. I almost always have loads of negative quality on my brakes simply as a means to help balance them.
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And while we’re here, maybe the rules should include how negative or positive you can put the sliders, so as not to guess what is considered “too min-maxed”. I think this is why he wants to see example cars.
Yeah, I won’t allow minmaxing too much with the sliders, that’s something I can say right now at least.
But people will minmax in any case, sure I can raise it a little bit but I don’t really see the minmaxing as an argument, because in one way or another, we will get it regardless of the budget…
City_Cruiser_-_997SUX.car (34.4 KB)
I also tried making a 2010 car that is quite relevant for what you could find at the bottom of the automobile food chain in 2010. Still under budget with ESC (which some manufacturers still cheapened out on in the early 2010s on the budget models) and stereo. Notice that the quality sliders are still at 0. I wasn’t working hard here either to keep costs down…
As I have said earlier, the budget might be raised but it’s certainly not impossible to build realistic 16K cars TBH, that’s all I am objecting against…
Penaltybox_2000_-_GTI_Turbo.car (29.0 KB)
One last example, a fairly typical early 90s hot hatch with what would have been considered good performance back in the days, no negative quality and only technology that would have been considered relevant in 1992, no more and no less. Still barely squeezes into the budget. So yeah, I agree on 18K then but not a cent over that, that is my final say.
1994 Camicasi Caspian - Clunker Concept
Demographic Design Challenge #1
So I was bored one day so, after reading this;
I looked at my entrant in that competition and this was the feedback I had for my entry…
It was a spiritual replica of a Toyota Yaris 1.3 (?) w/ a 6 speed manual gearbox. I’m not disputing the results BTW, I just want to point out that my NA Yarliq was hosed by all the power builds and was way off the pace; despite it being new, light and reliable! (Knugcab may be able to remember more about my car, lol)
So I decided to modify a car I made for another competition, since it would easily qualify as a clunker race donor in 2020…
The Camicasi Caspian has never looked so good, lol
I tried my best to modify it like I was a backyard enthusiast.
The engine is unchanged except for the adding of a turbo, pod filter, 3" exhaust and cannon muffler. The fuel mixture and timing were optimised to eke out every erg of energy and it has around 7psi of boost.
The gearbox is a 5 speed manual, whereas the competition car was submitted with an automatic, but the car would have been sold as a manual (if it were IRL) so this is still stock. The front rotors were changed from solid to vented discs, easily achieved via the aftermarket, and the brake pad compound was increased from 40 to 70. The rear drums are still present. The wheels were increased from 13" to 15" and are now alloys. The tyre has been widened to 185mm but is still a hard, long-life compound. The springs and dampeners were re-tuned for sportiness and the car was lowered.
No weight was removed via sliders and no settings were changed that, IMO, weren’t viable so the car still has hydraulic steering, five seats and a basic stereo fitted! (Factory fitted, NOT a modded part, lmao)
The results:
- Power increases from 55Kw to 78Kw
- Zero to 100Km/h drops from 15.7 sec to 10.4 sec
- Top speed is unchanged at 190Km/h
- Automation lap time drops from 3:01.88 to 2:43.8
Conclusion
Look everyone! Check out the awesome car I made! I'm especially proud of how much quicker and cooler it is compared to the original car, lol.I have no really useful input into making the second edition of the clunker run anything other than a min-max festival of speed. My 2c would be to vet each entrant individually, weigh up whether their car qualifies within the structure of the rules, then do a second check assessing whether it clashes with the spirit of the competition. The IRL clunker races usually penalise dodgy entrants with fines (that then get donated to charity) to encourage fairness, but clearly this won’t work for a forum competition, lol.
But I had lots of fun making this modded Caspian and I wanted to share it with everyone since I’m really happy with how it turned out and I want to inspire others to share their creations while we wait for the rules to be finalised, lol
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https://youtu.be/h307rZ0K7f8 hope we will have something like this in the end. So, no min max 200 Hp plus cars. Up to 200 is more than enuff.
OK, I have more or less decided on what I think is a fair compromise now.
As usual, I’m sure people is going to complain about this, but TBH, I ran the previous competition and I know what happened to the different kind of entrants there, and how to make it more “fair” to more realistic entries.
Now, try to read this multiple times until you are sure that you completely understand it, instead of making this thread a mess of totally unrelated questions and complaints:
The last time for every 30 minutes of the race, I did a reliability roll and a crash roll.
They worked like this. First I did a roll from 0 to 10. That was made to decide on the maximum amount of damage that the car could get, where 0 was no damage, and 10 breakdown beyond repair. If we take the reliability rolls for example then, we can say that a car had a reliability index of 70 and that the first roll said 10. That meant that it certainly could completely break down. But then the next step was to do multiple rolls between 0 and 100. The maximum amount of rolls that could be done then was 10, because the first roll said so, if the first roll had said “4”, four rolls could have been done. Because the reliability index of the car was 70, any roll that said between 71 and 100 meant that I should do another roll, but any roll that said 70 or below said that I should stop. So if the first roll said a number that was 70 or below, no damage would be recieved. If roll 1-6 was 71 or above, and roll 7 was 70 or below, the car would recieve a class 6 damage (which was a repair that required a short pitstop and slightly lowered the reliability index). If all ten rolls was 71 or above, the car would have a complete breakdown that could not be fixed.
What I will do, is simply that I will do the 0-10 roll twice on cars with more than 4 cylinders (maximum number of cylinders will be 8) or a turbo, and choose the worst case. So if both 0-10 rolls says “0”, then there will be no 0-100 rolls. But if the first 0-10 roll says “0” and the second one “10”, there will be 10 if the 0-100 rolls. If the car has more than 4 cylinders AND a turbo, I will do 3 of the 0-100 rolls.
With fiberglass bodied cars I will do the same with the crash roll (which was based on driveability) and do the 0-10 roll twice. Not that it is any worse driveability on fiberglass bodied cars, but they certainly have a risk to take more damage in a crash. If you think that it is “so unfair to cars with X, X and X”, well, don’t build a car with X, X and X then.
The budget will be set at 18K, end of story, if you can’t build an 18K car, you’re doing something wrong.
Sliders has to be set at an amount between -3 and +3, except for the tyre slider, that can be set between -3 and 0. “But they won’t affect anything”, I am going to hear now. Well, if they won’t affect anything why would you even touch them in the first place?
This is the penalty system that I am more or less finished with, if it won’t work this time I have to change it the next time, but we will try it this time. I will come back to the rules for the car itself later.
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Yeah, right, I see that stuff is happening here, and I am utterly sorry for having a life in the way for arguing in this thread every day.
The point is, that if EVERYBODY could just use some common sense and build realistic cars, there would be no problem at all. I mean, as it was pointed out earlier, the SPIRIT of the competition means everything. I could as well do this with no limitations for the cars, make it just another race for supercars. What would it change? Absolutely nothing, the cars would do more laps in 24 hours, which is just a number, someone would finish first, someone would finish last.
But when coming to the fun part of this, the RP part, it all would be SO much more fun IMO if everyone could visualize a race where cheap used cars are pitted against each other, not a “build the best sports car you can for 18K”-challenge. If a “best sports car for 18K” challenge had been what I had wanted, I would have started one!
And, as you might understand, the spirit is a bit ruined if this:
Is going to be completely crushed by an unrealistic cheap chinese copy of this:
And that was what we came dangerously close to the last time. I really didn’t want to make a thick rulebook for this, but I realize that it is probably what I will have to do to make this work.
We can take another example about the difference between IRL and Automationverse. There is a sports car with spaceframe construction, lightweight plastic body panels, mid mounted V6, double wishbone, four wheel disc brakes etc. that maybe due to rarity would not appear in a race like this in Sweden, but absolutely possible that it would in the states. I am of course talking about the Pontiac Fiero. I don’t know if prices are rising now, but for a long time they were cheap. Why? Because they were laughable with performance that really didn’t live up to the rest of what the car promised.
In Automationverse, however, nobody would build a slow ass Fiero for a competition like this, they would build a 300 hp Fiero and sweep the floor with every other car. If Fieros had looked like that IRL however, they would have been utterly expensive today. So the result is that I have to make rules that makes a Fiero replica totally out of question, unfortunately.
We can take another example.
Trafikjournalen is loosely based on the Swedish automobile magazine “Teknikens Värld”. This competition is based on a similar race they ran yearly in the late 80s/early 90s. And, it really was about pitting clunkers that were on their last leg against each other. So, I am going to present the winner from one of the years. Was it a Porsche? Lotus? At least a Golf GTI or Saab Turbo, right?
Believe it or not, it was one like this. A 70s Opel Kadett. They had a 1,2 litre pushrod 4-cylinder that made 58 horsepowers, did 0-100 km/h at around 20 seconds and had a top speed of around 140. Why it won? Because they could run like that for miles after miles without breaking, and still only be sipping fuel. It was dead reliable and it was far between the refuelling stops. Now, I tried make a replica some years ago and it didn’t turn out well, it got horrible gas mileage like most cars with carbs, but…still, I think you get the point?
What I REALLY would like to do, if it wasn’t for the fact that I would get so many complaints for it being “unfair” and “biased” and “impossible to know what is being judged or not” is to simply put HEAVY reliability penalties on:
A: Unrealistically fast cars for the budget
B: Cars that is appearantly minmaxed
and
C: Cars with strange engineering decisions. NO, there was no small hatchback in 1998 that had a ladder frame, solid axles all around with front wheel drive, a transversely mounted 2 litre V12,drum brakes up front and disc brakes in the rear, a front bench seat and no rear seat.
But knowing that I would drown in complaints then, I wont, and I allow for some engineering freedom. Already for the budget, you can build cars that is too extreme for this.
@Chickenbiscuit asked me if he should clean up the thread and I told him to do so later. But first, I really want you to read and maybe also understand my opinions as the host for this challenge.
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Small suggestion, maybe to encourage the kinds of cars you want, a power to weight ratio limit could be added (not as a goal for all cars to reach just under, but to weed out the outliers and guide people who still don’t know what to build.)
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You could also simply ban V8s. This challenge is to take place is Sweden… I’m not sure how many V8s are roaming around there for cheap.
I built 2 cars that are much more in line with what you’re looking for (one for a different challenge). Even with positive quality points added in strategic places I didn’t crack $16,000. The other one is under $12,500.
I think if you put an emphasis on fuel economy and reliability, cars built for speed will simply not be favored. But, yes, I’m in agreement with Chickenbiscuit about using a power to weight ratio to weed out the race cars (most of the desired cars should fall well below what ever you decide the ratio to be).
A minimum weight would be handy too as lightness is a great way to get good fuel economy and is typically more reliable.
Perhaps mandate sports/standard seats to stop basic seats being used as budget bucket seats (with free reliability)
Could ban 0 comfort cars or mandate a minimum score for the best market to simulate the car being popular enough to not be rare/exotic in 2020.
I’m currently running a hot hatch with 185hp and questionable fuel economy at 70.4 reliability (as of writing).
I could always have a try at this… with a car just as bad as my Oldman from last time (you could maybe use that for a minimum benchmark).
I have more or less decided on the rules at this point, it’s just that all the arguing about what the idea behind this competition was and how a realistic car should look was driving me nuts, especially since most of it was completely wrong…
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Hey Dude, about the rules,i build a very small SUV (like the jimny) do i have 2 Plus 2 seats on it also ? Or are you ok with 2 seats ? Bc its a offroader not a Sportscar. Pls let me know 
The Jimny had rear seats.
Random idea. Make tire grade factor into the reliability of the car. If the car is running on Ys, then it’s probably not going to be the most reliable of beasts?
I know that, but we build Hobbytunned cars so the first thing to do is removing the backseats. Also the next point is i am building the pickup Version, so are 2 seats enuff?
I would be suspicious of allowing 2 seats because you want to use the lightest frame you can find and due to being a pickup, justifies no interior or safety or aids and a beefy engine.