Best Car to Test Upgrade Differences

  • Thread starter Thread starter goixoye
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goixoye

goixoye

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I've decided I want to test all the various upgrades to try to understand their individual impact on car performance. I'm trying to find the best car to use for this testing. Ideally it would be a normal car with 4WD and would have all the available upgrades. The most difficult upgardes to find seem to be "displacement up" and "supercharger". I've not found a car that has ALL the available upgrades as options. Can anyone tell me if there is such a car? Or maybe ones that come the closest? The Skylines have displacement up but not superchargers. The muscle cars have superchargers but not turbos or displacement up. It seems that I will have to test at least a few different cars to understand the performance value of each upgrade.

I intend to test for top speed changes, changes in 1/4 mile times and lap times. I want to see where you get the most for your money.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me identifiy the best car(s) for this.

Ronny
 
it would seem the skyline is your best bet, if it allows everything plus disp increase.. i think its a case of you only have a supercharger in a non-turbo car... not positive though

i was personally quite glad to buy a used 99' wrx which allowed for original turbo and suspension, woo
 
No, Miata's are all 4 cylinder.
350Zs have SC, Turbo and NA, but no displacement or AWD (there was already a thread about that). I doubt there's anything that fulfills all your criteria.
 
goixoye
I've decided I want to test all the various upgrades to try to understand their individual impact on car performance. I'm trying to find the best car to use for this testing. Ideally it would be a normal car with 4WD and would have all the available upgrades. The most difficult upgardes to find seem to be "displacement up" and "supercharger". I've not found a car that has ALL the available upgrades as options. Can anyone tell me if there is such a car? Or maybe ones that come the closest? The Skylines have displacement up but not superchargers. The muscle cars have superchargers but not turbos or displacement up. It seems that I will have to test at least a few different cars to understand the performance value of each upgrade.

I intend to test for top speed changes, changes in 1/4 mile times and lap times. I want to see where you get the most for your money.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me identifiy the best car(s) for this.

Ronny
Click to expand...
There is no "best" because different cars respond differently to the upgrades.
 
That being said, the only differences you need to test are between S/C, Turbo and NA tuning. There's been a thread about this:
http://gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=66532

Wherein the Stage 5 (bought in Tuner Village) Turbo, the Supercharger and the NA Tune are compared. And basically, that's what you should expect of any car. NA is usually more responsive than Turbo tunes that give the same power, but turbo tunes usually give more... S/Cs give the most response and acceleration per horsepower rating, but are limited to one state of tune, which may not be as high as NA/Turbo top tunes.

High end turbo tunes suffer from a lot of lag. Stage 5 (where it's available) suffers less than Stage 4, but it's still there. Medium to low turbo tunes offer performance that is about the same as comparable NA Tunes, and are okay in low traction situations, where you benefit from the lag (you can point the car before all hell breaks loose) in certain situations.

Other stuff (suspension, weight reduction, etc.) varies a lot between cars, and there's no universal "best upgrade for the money" out there. Most people just stick them all on anyway and make the cars so undriveable that they spend more time in the garage than on the track.
 
Thanks to everybody for your input. I've checked some of the other threads that were noted. I expect to find the same results for those parts that were tested. I also intend to test other HP parts as well (exhausts, chips, polishing, balancing, nitro). I Additionally will work with non-HP parts (suspensions, clutches, flywheels, differentials, driveshafts, weight reductions, everything) for their relative changes to top speeds and lap times. The intent is to see if I can come up with some way of objectively rating the value of each part such as lap time reduction/dollar or top speed increase /dollar or something? The driving purpose behind this is I was testing for my AMC car and was surprised by my findings and due to the lack of money I never looked into many (most) of the available parts and I want to know for my own benefit the performance value of each part. I really liked the way Kolyana has set the AMC up with drivers being able to make choices based on cost / performance. I enjoy the competition in the WRS but I've really enjoyed maybe being able to come up with a different set-up that may allow me to beat a better driver because I've chosen "smarter". This will obviously take awhile (I might get something out before GT5) but I'll report back my findings.
Ronny
 
Good luck then. For universal cost-to-effect ratio, so far, Weight Reduction I seems pretty good (unless the car is 1000kg or below), Flywheels are terrific bang for the buck also, as is the oil change.

Suspension has very little effect on short twisty tracks if the car is already well-suspended, but has a greater effect on high-speed turns.

Wings make a tremendous difference... just look at the SCCA series in the OLR... the Mazdas are making a killing with those.

The problem with finding a rating value for different parts is that the lap time differences wil vary wildly according to different power and weight levels. Best concentrate on one type FF, FR, MR, AWD... and one class... Kei, Subcompact, Compact, Midsize, Sports, etc... at a time. Probably too time consuming, but a more accurate, if still general, view.
 

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