Quote from speedway :

if your saturn could rev to 8000rpm

The rev limiter is somewhere past 7250RPM. It is an automatic, and the highest I have seen it shift is at 7250RPM. So, the rev limiter should be somewhere past that.

GTi lookalike = 1984-92 Suzuki Swift


1.3, 101bhp. 101bhp isn't too far from 115....

And the 20v 4age engine (toyota), is 1.6 litres, and produced 158 when introduced in 1991. So 100bhp/litre was possible back then (even with 16 valves, e.g Honda B16, producing 160-170bhp back in the early 90s, from a 1.6)

Quote from Osco :

a miata 1.6 with greddy kit easily puts out 200hp at least...

What is a greddy kit?

GReddy turbo kit - a turbo kit produced by GReddy (a tuning company) :s

Modern cars have too much power and excessively wide tyres. It's a marketing ploy to fool idiots who don't really understand cars, who think that more power and fatter tyres make a car better.

LFS cars don't need MORE power, real life cars need less power, less weight, narrower tyres, simplier systems (there is a petition thing about the right to repair cars at garages NOT affiliated with manufacturers) etc. Motoring is cheaper in EVERY country that is has ever been, but at the price of over-complexity, and daft marketing.

And before some moron tries to tell me otherwise, this is just my opinion. What is fact is that learned people would agree with me.

Quote from _Rob_ :

GTi lookalike = 1984-92 Suzuki Swift


1.3, 101bhp. 101bhp isn't too far from 115....

And the 20v 4age engine (toyota), is 1.6 litres, and produced 158 when introduced in 1991. So 100bhp/litre was possible back then (even with 16 valves, e.g Honda B16, producing 160-170bhp back in the early 90s, from a 1.6)

Finaly the mighty swift my favorite car of all time
My dads swift is a 1,3 has 110 its a 95 model

Quote from anasmak11 :

They would be fine 5 years ago. but now?
they should all increase 50 - 100 more horsepower.

I've been playing LFS since 2002. The cars ARE five years old!

Old cars LOSE power over the years, if anything! :doh:

I'd rather keep the lower powered versions or even add more of them in LFS in the 75HP-110HP range with a weight of around 1000kg, since they best connect to what people drive in real life, at least if I look at the people I hang out with.

Personally I have such a car, and it is very much fun to try and race XFG in LFS, since it would cost me a lot of money, my driving license and probably my life on the real road.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Modern cars have too much power and excessively wide tyres. ... marketing ploy ...

Apparently Romanian women are too smart to be fooled by this marketing ploy, and they dig low powered, small sedans. Click on the picture in the link below to see a video of how proper cars should be setup and perform, and also what racing game these smart girls consider to be the in thing:

http://www.prostreetromania.ro/prostreet.htm

Being such an informative web site, it's getting very popular and if the video is taking too long to download and view, here's a .WMV mirror of the video:

psrmn.wmv

so JeffR : You would rather drive one of those ladas instead of a modified 350Z??






tristancliffe = And ofcourse wider tyres are better... then why do porsches, lamborghinis, F1 cars have really wide tyres???


The point of all that is that LFS is a simulator.. So, if it simulates road cars, then it should for current road cars..

LFS was developed about 5 years ago (not sure).. they were fine then.. but now, cars should be updated...

Seeing as all the cars are in a racing simulator, I see them all as "spec" class cars. I wouldn't mind if the power were kept the same, and just get rid of the weight of the interior paneling the rear seats, in all cars with rear seats, specially the GTR cars. GTR cars with rear seats? cmon!

Quote from anasmak11 :

tristancliffe = And ofcourse wider tyres are better... then why do porsches, lamborghinis, F1 cars have really wide tyres???

Don't ever try to argue with TC the Great! Sadly, he know's what he's talking about, and as most of the time, he's right... And now a short, and propably only half true explanation: While wide tyres do have a purpose in high powered sportscars to give them the grip thy need, a low powered car is actually quite crippled by them due to it's much higherr rolling resistance.

Quote from anasmak11 :

tristancliffe = And ofcourse wider tyres are better... then why do porsches, lamborghinis, F1 cars have really wide tyres???

Wider tyres are appropriate for some cars, and not for others.

The sole purpose of a tyre is to provide a car with traction with the ground. Traction is provided by friction, which is affected by the size of the contact patch (the surface area where a tyre makes contact with the ground) and the amount of weight pressing onto the contact patch. Basically, I'm talking about pressure, which proportional to the weight and counter-proportional to the size of the surface area.

To put simply: wider tyres have the effect of increasing the surface area, therefore reducing grip. Sounds odd, eh?

On the other hand, wider tyres are structurally capable of withstanding greater forces without getting too bent out of shape. This is of course highly dependent on the condition of the tyre, its pressure, and the way a car's weight, acceleration, and cornering forces are loaded onto the tyre.

If you fit a small, skinny tyre, on a powerful car with lots of aerodynamic down-force, the tyre is likely to fail much sooner than a larger, wider tyre.

On the other hand, if you fit a larger, wide tyre on a low-power car with no down-force, the car is going to suffer from lack of traction. The added weight of tyre is also going to make it handle sluggishly or unpredictably.

There are other factors in choosing what size of tyre to fit, and how to maintain the tyre. For example, tyres fitted on a car with inappropriate suspension settings can cause side-effects like torque-steer and uneven tyre wear.

It's all about keeping the choice appropriate for the car. A lot of youngsters who want to look "cool", lower their cars and fit ridiculously wide tyres without properly calculating how it will affect their car's performance and handling. A lot of the times, these modified cars will handle worse than if their car was kept in factory configuration.

Companies like Porsche, Lambo, Ferrari, etc., choose their tyres based upon many thousands of kilometres of testing by highly experienced drivers (eg. Porsche's main tester is Walther Rohrl, double world rally champion). Cars made by those companies typically have a lot of power, substantial aerodynamic down-force, and finely-tuned steering and suspension settings. The tyres are chosen to provide the best balance between ride comfort and handling. They don't choose wider tyres just because "wider tyres are better".

The fact is, the size of tyre is very dependent on the car itself and how it is designed to be driven.

Quote from samjh :

To put simply: wider tyres have the effect of increasing the surface area, therefore reducing grip. Sounds odd, eh?

I agree with the rest of your post, but from my limited tyre knowledge I don't think the quoted statement is true, at least for tarmac/hard surfaces.

The aspect you're forgetting there is load sensitivity. The more load you put on a tyre, the less grip it has. By grip I mean the correlation between how much load you put on it and how much traction you get in return. For example if you put 3000N load on a tyre you might get 3000N of traction out of it, while when putting on 5000N load you only get 4200N traction, which would mean the grip coefficient dropped from 1 to 0.84.

However, the small increase in grip provided by a greater surface area is usually negated by the heavier weight and worse rolling resistance, as well as a lot of other properties that are unnecessary or even unwanted in a low powered car, just like you said.

-1 The cars are good as they are. If you add hp to make them modern you need to add a few 100kg euro ncap required steel too. (all this has already been said in the thread)

But I wouldn't mind club sport versions of the road cars (slightly tuned engines with trim removed for less weight) still running on road_super though or maybe road_ultra, not slicks.

Fatter tires don't give you any help when cornering. In order to maintain complete contact with the road, you have to increase the negative camber. Only problem is, if you increase the static camber then you will have worse straight line traction. So to compensate for wider tires you have to install a looser anti-roll bar to avoid messing up the straight-line traction. And the wider tires will wear much faster because it will be sheared in two different directions while cornering.

wow... im impressed with this level of knowledge..
any of you guyz profession has to do with cars?

respect to you

I think the power figures for the road cars is realistic considering they represent '90s cars, but even though the power figures may be realistic the power delivery of the turbo cars is wrong. The way the turbos spools is more like a car with a huge turbo. I own a '90's 2.0l turbo which is almost identical to the xrt, it has the same power and torque at the same boost pressure but if I floor the throttle at 3,500rpm it hits full boost almost as fast as the throttle hits the floor and stays there until 6,500rpm and in higher gears it can hit full boost as low as 2,900 rpm. Try this on the xrt and you will see what I mean. Oh and the limiter is at nearly 8,000 rpm on my car incedently.
I personally would hate if they made lfs cars like modern cars because modern cars are bigger, heavier and then they put bigger and sometimes more powerful engines in them to make up for this, which imo is a step backwards.

Quote from eight6er :

I personally would hate if they made lfs cars like modern cars because modern cars are bigger, heavier and then they put bigger and sometimes more powerful engines in them to make up for this, which imo is a step backwards.

Exactly!

In real life we are meant (note: meant) to be concerned with fuel efficiency, carbon footprints, recycling and long vehicle lives. Modern design/manufacturering techniques and styles mean we have heavy cars, requiring larger engines, bigger brakes, more complex electronics so that your average driver doesn't kill himself having twice the power he really needed. Then they stick on bigger, wider tyres that give more 'grip', but make the handling worse (often, but not always), driving the costs up needlessly, killing the driving pleasure. Because of the complexity, you can't do much work on them yourselves, especially when it comes to the electronics (which control everything these days), so you HAVE to get it serviced at a dealer (which generally means WORSE quality for a HIGHER price, at silly extended mileages), resulting in cars that are not economic to maintain/run after about 8 years (if that), rather than 20 or more years older cars can easily manage...

It's called progress, but what it really amounts to is car manufacturers desperately vying for your money by adding silly gimmicks, and charging you low list prices (but making up for it by high servicing costs, high parts costs, and the need to buy more new cars because the old ones don't last as long).

Do Lambo's, Porsches, F1 cars etc need bigger tyres? Yes, they have more power and more grip (high performance). Does your Clio (a hatchback designed for going to Tescos, regardless of which 'version' you have) need 265 tyres? Nope. You'd be just as 'quick', and more economical with 190s!!! It's a ploy that stupid people have fallen for hook, line and sinker; and as stupid people MASSIVELY outnumber sensible people, they dictate the market. Hence modern cars are designed for stupid people, with stupid gimmicks and so on and so forth.

I'll stop ranting now. I can't think of an interesting modern car without getting in to silly money or it being useless for daily transport.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Fatter tires don't give you any help when cornering. In order to maintain complete contact with the road, you have to increase the negative camber. Only problem is, if you increase the static camber then you will have worse straight line traction. So to compensate for wider tires you have to install a looser anti-roll bar to avoid messing up the straight-line traction. And the wider tires will wear much faster because it will be sheared in two different directions while cornering.

Nevertheless, if your tire rolls over a marble or a little blotch of oil or water, the wider the tire is the less % of the contact patch is on the slippery substence. If 100% is on oil, you've lost all your grip; if 50% is on oil, you've only lost half.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Exactly!

In real life we are meant (note: meant) to be concerned with fuel efficiency, carbon footprints, recycling and long vehicle lives. Modern design/manufacturering techniques and styles mean we have heavy cars, requiring larger engines, bigger brakes, more complex electronics so that your average driver doesn't kill himself having twice the power he really needed. Then they stick on bigger, wider tyres that give more 'grip', but make the handling worse (often, but not always), driving the costs up needlessly, killing the driving pleasure. Because of the complexity, you can't do much work on them yourselves, especially when it comes to the electronics (which control everything these days), so you HAVE to get it serviced at a dealer (which generally means WORSE quality for a HIGHER price, at silly extended mileages), resulting in cars that are not economic to maintain/run after about 8 years (if that), rather than 20 or more years older cars can easily manage...

[ snip ]

A friend of mine part-exed his part-ex for the very reason that computers in cars == far less fun. He originally had an E36 (uGH!) M3 and swapped it in for a Skyline. While the skyline was quick as .... in a straight line, it wasn't fun to drive.. after 3 days, he was back in his M3.

This also bugs me as I used to do all the work on my, family and friends cars, but as you say, is nion impossible these days due to ECUs and needing both a degree in IT and ££££ worth of equipment. Gone are the days of a light bulb on the end of a screwdriver with a crocodile clip to check circuitry I had to get an auto-sparky in to sort a headlight issue out on my E30 as I was worried about blowing something serious (electronics have never really been my thing(tm) in mechanics anyway). Thankfully, I can still do most of the servicing at home, although a bitch as I had my BMW service keys nicked years ago.. which I could do with now



Regards,

Ian

Quote from tristancliffe :

Exactly!

In real life we are meant (note: meant) to be concerned with fuel efficiency, carbon footprints, recycling and long vehicle lives. Modern design/manufacturering techniques and styles mean we have heavy cars, requiring larger engines, bigger brakes, more complex electronics so that your average driver doesn't kill himself having twice the power he really needed. Then they stick on bigger, wider tyres that give more 'grip', but make the handling worse (often, but not always), driving the costs up needlessly, killing the driving pleasure. Because of the complexity, you can't do much work on them yourselves, especially when it comes to the electronics (which control everything these days), so you HAVE to get it serviced at a dealer (which generally means WORSE quality for a HIGHER price, at silly extended mileages), resulting in cars that are not economic to maintain/run after about 8 years (if that), rather than 20 or more years older cars can easily manage...

It's called progress, but what it really amounts to is car manufacturers desperately vying for your money by adding silly gimmicks, and charging you low list prices (but making up for it by high servicing costs, high parts costs, and the need to buy more new cars because the old ones don't last as long).

Do Lambo's, Porsches, F1 cars etc need bigger tyres? Yes, they have more power and more grip (high performance). Does your Clio (a hatchback designed for going to Tescos, regardless of which 'version' you have) need 265 tyres? Nope. You'd be just as 'quick', and more economical with 190s!!! It's a ploy that stupid people have fallen for hook, line and sinker; and as stupid people MASSIVELY outnumber sensible people, they dictate the market. Hence modern cars are designed for stupid people, with stupid gimmicks and so on and so forth.

I'll stop ranting now. I can't think of an interesting modern car without getting in to silly money or it being useless for daily transport.

I could'nt have said it better myself. Mainly because I'm so slow at typing it would take me all day to write it! It's frustrating thinking of all the new technology they have for making cars stiffer and lighter is wasted on making cars bigger and full of useless gimmicks.

Quote from Ian.H :

A friend of mine part-exed his part-ex for the very reason that computers in cars == far less fun. He originally had an E36 (uGH!) M3 and swapped it in for a Skyline. While the skyline was quick as .... in a straight line, it wasn't fun to drive.. after 3 days, he was back in his M3.

I had the same problem. I had one of those skylines, the Gts-t and it was great fun, then a friend of mine bought the GTR model with computer controlled 4wd. The GTR was really fast but not as much fun as my Gts-t. I like your self do bits to my own and friends cars, so I found that if you took the fuse for the 4wd out, it made the car rwd and way more fun to drive! So I put a switch on the fuse and he had the best of both worlds.

thank you tristancliffe for such great messages..
You are totaly correct in all your points.. but look at another side..

Nowadays, normal sedans (Lexus, Mercedes, BMWs...) are doing 0-100 km/h in around 5 to 6 seconds...
Back in the time your talking about, that was Ferrari performance...

So, imagine a place with cars this powerful with No traction control and computers?? (Chaos). not everyone can drive like you and me,...

If you know how to drive, you have the koenigsegg, zonda, porsche GT... expensive, but there are cars for all markets...

so gimmicks and computers in cars are sometimes good

(not for LFS ofcourse)


take care

Quote from anasmak11 :

So, imagine a place with cars this powerful with No traction control and computers?? (Chaos). not everyone can drive like you and me,...

That'll be the begining of COMMON SENSE!!!