The Car Shopping Round (Round 64): Tears in Heaven

nope, im using sankrit name as usual for this round

making super cheap economical car really not my strong suit, the interior is terrible because i cant tweak the engine to be more efficient but at least i tried :stuck_out_tongue:

Great writeup @koolkei, The reason for the looks is that it’s a budgetversion of this one: AUTOMATION PRO LEAGUE 3rd Round: 1955 NASCAR Closed due to lack of interest :slight_smile:

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Love how you separated the true contenders from the half-baked wannabes - can’t wait for the results! It just shows how challenging this round was.

dude… rude much?

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i didn’t think my car was that bad? ithe skinny tires gave me better driveability and better economy

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Thats a problem I’ve noticed with small engine running eco turbos is that it is impossible to make them spool early. I noticed that by decreasing the compressor size it actually increased the spool time and so that messed up my usual turbo strategy.

Hmm, I’ll check a few things you’ve complained about :slight_smile: I’m not very good at building budget cars, so I might have missed something, but I think most of my choices were somewhat sensible. I6 was surprisingly cheaper than I4 or I3 IIRC.

Power steering ruins my great economy figure, that’s why I didn’t include it.

And as for the viscous differential, well, I kinda forgot it wasn’t a Storm car, and clicked it and never looked back.

yeah i kinda know, i4 and i3 are the safe route here want better spooling? i6 turbo will do it, but that will end up with too many parts with such small engine. the problem is the turbo itself. you need to be really amazing with the engine tune to really able to compete with the NA. it’s a land of compromise. turbo is more expensive, also ups the running costs. and people would just prefer the NA if there’s no real significant advantage in turbos.

just like irl. the daihatsu copen was it? the kei car one is a 660cc turbo, but the exported one has the option of an NA 1.3L i4

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Concise yet thorough and illuminating review of this round and what a diverse set of entries! Now I doubt I’m still in the running but I hopefully I’ll have learned some tips for the developing market and adjusted the design to address most of them.

Actually, I have a bit of a question for you or any way regarding the use of the low friction cast piston everyone always seems to say it has a reliability penalty but it does still boost economy a fair bit. So then when is it ever valid to use it and with which engine internals?

Low friction pistons don’t have any reliability penalty directly, but they can withstand much lower revs - even lower than the standard cast, I think. The way I found out to use them effectively is to combine them with a low stroke engine. High stroke alone improves efficiency and (with the same displacement) reduces weight, but oversquare design (high bore, low stroke) with low friction pistons gives even better efficiency* - and, as a side effect of an oversquare design, improves smoothness and allows for higher revs** - at a cost of higher weight, but it’s usually worth it. For me high stroke is useful for extremely efficient engines (pseudo-diesels) or OHV ones, as it allows for the highest revs and perfectly complements OHV’s low weight and small size.

######*than a comparable undersquare design with different pistons
######**compared to a similar oversquare design with low friction pistons - comparable or higher than an undersquare design with standard pistons

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it doesn’t effect reliability, as long as it’s revving low enough. low friction pistons are ‘weak’ and cannot be revved even a little bit. i don’t think i’ve ever made an engine with low friction cast piston that revved more than 6600.

if you’re clueless how to use them, this should be a good method

  1. just pick an engine size on roughly what you want.
  2. pick the low friction cast.
  3. lower the rev limit down until you’re not losing any significant reliability score anymore.
    that’s the limit of the low friction piston in that particular stroke. yes, just stroke, bore size doesn’t effect it directly
  4. now you refine the engine size you want. just remember, the longer the stroke, the lower the revs, and this applies even more significantly to low friction casts.

but also take into consideration that most economy oriented engines have longer stroke than they do bore, because they provide better torque for the size, and undersquared means lighter engine too.

@szafirowy01 well we differ in perspective. this is how i see it. if i want a pure economical engine, just get the stroke as long as reasonably possible. but if you need a little bit of performance, use a square engine at best.

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Pure economical, yes - then long stroke is good. But eco-only focused engine is rarely needed - usually it’s a matter of balance between economy and performance, and low revs usually harm performance pretty badly. Economy is less harmed by an oversquare engine than performance by an undersquare one.

nah mate. bigger capacity, and lower cam profile. same specific power output, more torque, and same if not better fuel economy.

By what I could read, me and Phale seem to have actually taken a similiar approach of the “super cheap …box” while Phale’s was very much less dodgy, and I struggled to get everything inlcluding infotainment fitted into that little kei body!
I just had to use that kei body! And embrace its drawbacks.
It has absurdly inefficient aero @~1.000 m^2. I had to actually use fully clad just to fulfill the economy requirements within the theme of “repurposed kei car, slightly altered engine, budget trim”. This on top of basically stripping out everything and making the panels partially out of glued tin foil :sweat_smile:
The engine itself is more reliable than everything else on that car :sweat_smile:

Also great no-frills style reviews!

Also, so nice from both of you elaborating on the low friction pistons, @szafirowy01 and @koolkei! Also, don’t forget that a turbo can make the horses gallop earlier in the RPM range :wink:

Wasn’t even mentioning capacity :slight_smile: So you can’t say “nah”, as I fully agree on this (capacity and cam profile) :smiley: But about the cam profile - I didn’t state it, but I was talking about engines with VVL - in their case combining high revs and economy is not a problem. For the engines without it I didn’t find a “perfect balance” yet.

@4LGE Yeah, I definitely don’t forget about turbo :slight_smile: I’ve discovered some interesting things about it, but they weren’t particularly useful in this case - displacement and VVL were more or less enough :slight_smile:

oh well in the case of VVL then i’m with you. but i personally wouldn’t make a economy oriented only engine with VVL in the first place though. only when i’m making a variant do i do that.

Thanks for the tips @szafirowy01 and @koolkei very much appreciated. I’ll have to do some more testing with my engines.

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With basic infotainment my car would have cost $9360 with over 40 comfort :wink:

@Rk38 The way I look at it, there are several ways to make an engine more economical: AFR, cam profile, low friction pistons, compression/ignition, etc. AFR and cam profile come first because (with DI and VVL) it’s easy to choose the most economical options for those without sacrificing performance. But low friction pistons basically force you to compromise performance, so you should only use them when performance isn’t necessary and you really need the economy.

It makes sense to pair them with cast/cast since those are the cheapest from a PU perspective and they won’t harm reliability since the pistons are the limiting factor. Going forged is a waste, unless you really care about the smoothness.

Assuming it’s available, I personally wouldn’t make any engine without VVL :stuck_out_tongue:

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If I removed basic infotainment:

The comfort would drop from 31 to 22. But heeey, slight boost in economy and a trivial increase in reliability, which would’ve allowed me to use semi clad instead, which doesn’t drop the price any further, though :stuck_out_tongue:
Now, what would Tata say? What would Dacia do?