West Automotive

[phale]

I had a look at your engine. I like it quite a lot actually, it’s an interesting idea and implemented fairly well. 24mpg is actually a very impressive efficiency considering how heavy and unaerodynamic the body is. It’s certainly not ‘rather average’, the highest combined fuel economy in pickups today is 22mpg.

If you want to go higher though, your best bet is improving the trim design rather than the engine. Ditch the chunky tires and active suspension and you can easily get +4mpg. Fix the terribad braking (vented discs are a good start), then you can remove brake cooling and reduce overall cooling to minimum required for better aerodynamics. And if that’s still not enough, go for a clad undertray and cooling flaps. While you’re at it, might want to take a look at that excessive wheelspin, AWD helps

[koolkei]

here’s a bit of the i4 fix. i got economy up even after i ditched the low cast friction piston

then i realized, you’re over cooling your engine. that effects fuel economy a bit too.
after cutting down the cooling

dropped the 7 speed, and went with a wide range 6 speed

and since i think you want to keep it very offroad friendly. i kept the offroad
but the tires are actually too big. switched to 205 instead of 225, got the drivability back up, and since smaller tires also helps the economy, that’s another boost.
your front brakes are very uncapable of stopping the truck though. you know how to read the brake graph right? utility based vehicles likes overkill brakes.

overall this is the result

here’s the engine too.

yeah, the peak power didn’t change that much. but what changed is. the band of power around peak power. from the 5000rpm all the way to redline has the same amount of power.

there’s also another last option to increase fuel economy too. switch to alsi block and heads. but that adds quite a bit of cost for an also pretty impactful fuel economy.

in the end. i agree with phale. there’s just as much tweaking that could be done with the trim as there is with the engine.

let me try with the i6.

[phale]

Managed to squeeze out 30mpg with the I4 (manual) with some extensive tweaking

[koolkei]

i’d have to guess that you dropped the offroad tires didn’t you?

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not much i can do economy wise. the engine is plainly too heavy. v6 may had been a better choice. but i didn’t really take a deep look into it.

[phale]

Yeah. Hard tires also offer more grip, for less wheelspin and better drivability. Plus they’re cheaper.

[koolkei]

but then that’s a totally different truck.

by the way i see it, he wanted a offroad friendly truck.
if it’s a offroad capable but mainly for the roads, then i’d have to agree that AWD with hard/medium tires AND non-locker diffs are the way to go. but this choices is all on him.

[BigBlackNerd]

I like the changes BUT:
I simply can’t drop the offroad tires, I might make them thinner though.
I have to keep the Off Road skidtray, as this is an offroad truck
No, I don’t know how to read the brake graph, LOL.
I am disappointed with the low end power of the new engines, and I won’t be using them.
I overcooled the engine on purpose: In hot and high altitude environments, air is less dense, so you need physically more grille area to sufficiently cool the engine.
Yes, the engines are VERY heavy, that is partially by design, as I wanted them to be relatively simple, and to use cast blocks.
I wont be using AWD, as it is less capable off-road than 4WD.

What I will change:
I will make thinner tires, increase braking capacity, and rework the transmission.
I suspect the excessive wheel slip was due to a combination of my complete inabillity to make a proper transmission and the ridiculous amounts of torque that these engines put out.
(And I have absolutely no clue why I neglected to use vented discs, lol.)

In short, I wanted a hilux (a notoriously tough, dirt cheap, simple, and cost effective pickup), phale made a ridgeline (a pickup for the road with great ride comfort, fuel efficiency, and reliability, but lacking in overall ruggedness) and koolkei made a tacoma (a jack of all trades; essentially an americanized - and somewhat less rugged version of the hilux). All are great trucks for what they do, but only one is so reliable, rugged, durable and brain-dead simple that it’s used by terrorist cells everywhere!

Anyway, thanks for all the help, and I’ll be back soon with the reworked models!
I do have a much more road friendly, 4cyl, 4door, 4wd type car in the works that will be much more fuel efficient and make more sense for the road.

[phale]

Okay, I like the idea of a super-efficient off-roader. Decided to try it out with a clean slate approach, all new body and engine… with some pretty nice results.

$17500 with 20% markup.

[BigBlackNerd]

Really nice!

add export pls b0ss?

[koolkei]

@BigBlackNerd

I am disappointed with the low end power of the new engines, and I won’t be using them.

lol. you wanted lower turbo lag, so there it is. a lower peak torque but with wider power band.

and now you’re saying you don’t want it. well suit yourself

and i don’t remember the hilux being fuel efficient. just cost effective.

[BigBlackNerd]

Not trying to be argumentative, but I also said that I wanted power to peak below 4k rpm.

[rcracer11m]

Working with gasoline engines really the only way to do that is to choke the engine in some way by either using a really small turbo or really low cam profile.

[koolkei]

nononono. don’t be afraid to have an argument. a friendly one that is. that’s how we discuss and improve ourselves

actually. i looked up the hilux

The 2TR-FE is a 2693 cc I4 gasoline engine. It features DOHC, 16 valves and VVT-i.
Maximum power is 120 kilowatts (160 hp) at 5,200 rpm, and 246 newton
metres (181 lbf·ft) of torque at 3,800 rpm with redline of 5500 rpm.
The bore and stroke are 95 mm × 95 mm. Average fuel consumption using the JC08 method is 9.0 km/L (25 mpg-imp; 21 mpg-US).
The 2TR-FE received updates in 2015 to feature Dual VVT-i.
The maximum power with Dual VVT-i is 122 kilowatts (164 hp) at
4,000 rpm, and 245 newton metres (181 lbf·ft) of torque at 3,800 rpm.

so heck. your i4 is enough for the job

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just for fun

YOU WANTED MOAR POWER?!?! HERE MOAR POWER
i just doubled up on the turbo pressure

[Bogi01]

lol XD anyway nice truck since im stuck in 50’s atm so i might reach you hehe.

[BigBlackNerd]

I actually might use something similar to that (if it revs high enough) in a rally car, stay tuned

[BigBlackNerd]

Regarding the wheelspin, changing from 4x4 to AWD made it worse, and from 4x4 to RWD (strangely) kept wheelspin the same. You would think that driving all wheels would reduce wheelspin, but hey. The only thing that helped was setting the final drive to 100 (hell no), and using road tires (which I decided that I be using on the 4x2 trims).
Otherwise, the truck is nearly done, except for the last few tweaks to the brakes and a few (minor) edits to the trims.

Also, I just learned that wheelspin is calculated using an average of how much the wheels spin at full throttle throughout all the gears. I’m assuming that testing at full throttle is what is whacking out the wheelspin numbers, and not giving an accurate/reasonable figure for daily driving; especially for such a torquey engine on such shit tires.

[Der_Bayer]

You should check out the drive distribution when switching from 4x4 or RWD to AWD. By default it will be set to 100% at the rear axle. No wonder that AWD won’t help reducing wheelspin then.

[rcracer11m]

I think it actually puts 100% power to the front axle, not the rear, and thats why the wheelspin is higher at first with AWD

[BigBlackNerd]

I tried to change it, but it shows that it is 100% to the front and it is locked there.
I thought it was a graphical glitch, but I guess not.
4x4 is doing the same thing.
EDIT:
This is what 4x4 looks like.

Power distribution for 4x4 is 0Front and 100 in the rear, and the slider is locked.

[Sillyworld]

You can’t adjust the power distribution in a 4x4 mate. In game, 4x4 works as a RWD set-up, except it adds off-road points, but other than that (and weight) all the stats remains the same.

Also, awful gearing, that’s why you get so much wheelspin. in the right chart, the red line must be under the blue line whenever possible.