Engine Re-build & Chassis Restore Options

[Hig-GT]

This seems to come up a lot. So I'll try to sum up both.

The engine rebuild feature basically takes your engine, strips it down, puts new parts in (such as pistons, valves, seals etc.) and puts the engine back together. The reason it will swap these parts is because these items can become warn overtime, meaning the engine will not run as smoothly as it did when it first rolled at the factory. Thus meaning that the engine rebuild feature is for relatively old cars, cars that are say, no more than 10 years old shouldn't need an engine overhaul. (This remains the case UNLESS the car is very high mileage)

As for the chassis restore option. This option takes the chassis (or the chassis / body of the car) and rebalances it as overtime it can become slightly twisted (so to speak) meaning that it will not perform at it's optimum. This will affect the handling of your car hugely! The chassis can also become twisted from multiple accidents, crashes on the road in real life can twist a chassis so imagine what a heavy impact can do! From my experience I have never had a car that has needed this option so I think this should only be used if your car is handling like a complete pig!

Hope that helps. If anyone feels there should be any additions then please add it on below

 

[fdjizm]

Thanks for the summary, the engine rebuild is a must after a while.
but the chassis restore thing is a complete waste of money I will never do it again there is no reason to, I noticed 0 handling change after dropping 500k on a chassis restore.

Never again.

 

[Troux]

That's good theory, but I think a lot of people here understood that theory already. The question is, how does it affect the cars in the game? It may be a looooong time before we can see some hard numbers to justify the insane costs of these repairs, and to know when they will be justified.

 

[Stumper81]

the rebuild on a Yellowbird gave me approx 20% jump in power, from 620hp to 731.

Is that worth 85k? yea, but I wish they said what the output HP would be prior, so racers could make an informed decision. Will the Toyota Minolta be helped by this?

 

[slothrop]

How do you know if your newer car needs an engine or chassis rebuild? They should give you a gauge or something like they do for the oil.....

 

[MoebiusUK]

How do you know if your newer car needs an engine or chassis rebuild? They should give you a gauge or something like they do for the oil.....

I think HP will be the number you want to look at regarding engine rebuild.

The chassis rebuild, on the other hand, is based on the feel of the car. For example, if it's understeering/oversteering more than it used to, wobbling on the straights or really unstable under braking from high speeds etc etc. I never rebuild the chassis as I've never had issues with handling of any of my cars and therefore think it's a complete waste of money.

 

[NOS Waster]

How do you know if your newer car needs an engine or chassis rebuild? They should give you a gauge or something like they do for the oil.....

No they shouldn't give us an indicator. It is up to you to figure out when your car's HP is dropping even after changing the oil. Also, IRL you wouldn't get a check engine light when the parts are just wearing down. You get a Check Engine light for something catastrophic, so a light like this for engine rebuilds would lower the realism of the game.

Good thing to do:
1. Buy a used car
2. Give it an engine rebuild (this will change the oil, too)
3. Record the HP.
4. Drive it 1,000 miles and check the HP.
5. Repeat step 4 until 5,000 miles.
6. Change the oil and check the HP.
7. Repeat steps 4 through 6 until you have driven it 50,000 miles after overhauling the engine.
8. Record the HP.
9. Overhaul the engine
10. Record the HP gained from overhauling the engine after 50,000 miles.

I would say the earliest you want to do an overhaul is 10,000 miles.

 

[Hisae]

It will be rather obvious when your car needs to get it's engine overhauled.
My Minolta had about 1120BHP when oilchanged, when I got it brand new.
Now it has 910BHP with new oil.
So when you need to refurbish the engine, the game will be very clear with telling you by lowering your BHP with a ton.

 

[NOS Waster]

It will be rather obvious when your car needs to get it's engine overhauled.
My Minolta had about 1120BHP when oilchanged, when I got it brand new.
Now it has 910BHP with new oil.
So when you need to refurbish the engine, the game will be very clear with telling you by lowering your BHP with a ton.

I agree.
I also think that people even without looking at their HP will notice that their cars start to accelerate slower over time.

 

[Dragon_HKS]

I agree.
I also think that people even without looking at their HP will notice that their cars start to accelerate slower over time.

so right, your car actually looses 20mph or more, its so apparent, your time drops so bad even when you do perfect run

 

[vfourmax]

I was using a fully tuned Z1R for grinding out a level advancement on the Indy oval track and with a tad over 550 high reving racing miles the engine lost about 50 horsepower that an oil change would not correct.

Went and did an engine rebuild and the horsepower was restored to new specs. I know that 550 miles is not a lot but I think that the way the engine is run affects the life before deterioration in horsepower begins. With Indy being a track that you stay near or at redline constantly it would make sense that 500 miles would start to cause power loss.

I like this added aspect of the game, makes you care for your rides to keep them in top shape. I would like to see more added to where you could run championship seasons with specific classes of cars and the budget and race shop bills would be a part of team management.

Would bring into context that racing smart and not always trashing your equipment could lead to a more realistic racing experience. Sometimes on some days you only have a 3rd place car!

 

[Safoo]

I tried the chassis repairs on my Minolta after crashing it pretty severly. After the accident the controller would vibrate in my hands going down nice flat straights, for no apparant reason other then to tell me "something" was wrong with the car, dropped the required 500K and the vibration dissapeared. (guess I'll be turning off the vibration setting lol, a heck of a lot cheaper!) I didn't notice much of a handling difference though?

 

[z06fun]

In real life, a race purpose type engine would need rebuilding far more often than a production car engine. My experience in the game seems similar. The formula car will not go far before its engine starts dropping off, but it also revs to 18k. A miata will go many many more miles before you start seeing the drop off.

 

[Uscbryan]

Strange because I have used the RM zr1 to grind out a few mill on the American championship. I have nailed the wall a million times getting bored and talking on my cell phone. I don't notice any reduction in the car. Actually my lap times have gotten better by a second or two. I figured the chassis and engine rebuild were a gimmick to make us feel as though it was a real car or maybe something that would be needed once damage in patched in.. I'm not going to do it until I notice the car not performing like it did.

 

[Parnelli Bone]

To all those wondering why they don't feel a difference with handling before and after chassis restoring: the service isn't going to make this huge difference for most road cars, it'll merely make the handling subtly a little tighter in most cases.

Cars that are more fragile (full-scale racing cars usually) there should be more of a difference before and after restore, although I haven't tried restoring one of these yet.

 

[jbrennen]

In GT4, chassis refresh made a big difference. With the La Sarthe 24hr Endurance races in the LMP cars, you would really notice the car's chassis start to get noticeably less controllable once you were about 18 hours into the race or so. It was especially noticeable on the long high-speed run from Mulsanne to Indianapolis. I usually ended up losing about 20-30 MPH speed on that section from the beginning of the race to the end, and it wasn't because of lack of power, it was because it was damn near impossible to keep the car from bouncing out of control when at full throttle, so I'd be lifting for every bump and kink in the road. (At the beginning of the race, the car stuck quite well at full throttle through that entire section.)

I also had the same issues in GT4 when trying to complete the FGT championship in a Mazda 787B; you couldn't do chassis refresh in a middle of a series, and by the time that the FGT series hit the Nurburgring (11th race maybe?), the chassis on the car was so worn out that it was all I could do to keep the car on the pavement -- keeping up with the FGT cars was damn near impossible. But quit the series, then go do a chassis refresh and retry the FGT Nurburgring race as a single event, and the car was a whole lot easier to drive.


In GT4, I never noticed much if any difference with Chassis Refresh in any car other than the LMP cars -- I suspect that it was there and modeled similarly, but that only the LMP cars were pushing the chassis so hard that it made a big difference. (The FGT cars in GT4 seemed to be immune to wear -- they never needed oil changes or chassis refreshes, and never lost power.)

 

[grayson7614]

I stupidly started a new thread on this with the following info'. I've just pasted it here for you guys...

Some info’ on engine re-builds and chassis strengthening

Having not found a definitive answer as to whether or not the engine and chassis re-builds actually work, I figured this may deserve its own thread… Sorry if I’m wrong!
After finally acquiring a Formula GT I decided to run a few tests. For A-Spec I used the 10 lap Indy’ circuit from the Dream Car Championship and for B-Spec I used the same race but over its 22 lap distance.
For the B-Spec races I issued no instructions to my level 26 Bob.
I ran each race twice. The first run before the expensive engine and chassis re-builds and the second run after having them installed… At a cost of 1 million credits!
At the time of purchase my Formula GT had already clocked up 4,522 miles or 7,277 kilometres. Before the first run I gave the Formula GT an oil change, (which increased the BHP from 880-925) bought racing-soft tyres (for A-Spec only) and installed the ‘rigidity’ upgrade.
After installing the engine and chassis upgrades the BHP increased to 935!

Here are the A-Spec results
1st run best lap-00:38.423
1st run total time-06:40.354
2nd run best lap-00:38.402
2nd run total time-06:34.848

Here are the B-Spec results
1st run best lap-00:42.542
1st run total time-16:50.973
2nd run best lap-00:42.444
2nd run total time-16:47.365

Hope this is useful!

Please feel free to draw your own conclusions… I can’t help but feel like I’ve just wasted 1 million credits!

 

[tatfa]

I kept coming 5th/6th/7th with a car , i then did the engine rebuild raced the same car in the same race and same Bob and won by a clear margine ( B tech ) It seems to make a difference ( The car inquestion i had used and abused non stop for xp so it had high milage )