Rollcages/Stabilizers

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What's your opinions/experiences with rollcages and the way the affect cars' behaviour in GT4? I would assume that stiffer is better and more "neutral", and that suspension tuning will take care of the balance, but I've found no real proof of what it does to a car's handling yet.. And since I generally like my cars on the soft side, I'm sort of reluctant to buy without hesitation. After trying a lot of cars with these on and off, the results are very much within the 'placebo' range (I may have noticed something, but nothing convincing either way), as with a few other settings.

One of these is the stabilizer/anti roll bar. I may start to notice a pattern on one or two cars, but on my next it's seemingly reversed. Now I know the way GT4 cars react to some settings (including shocks and springs) aren't quite true to RL, so I don't really trust RL facts when it comes to stabs either. I know that a soft front bar and stiff rear bar should make the car looser, but to be honest I've found 2/3 to be looser than both 1/4 and 4/1 on some cars (may be the placebo effect at play again). I'm aware that most cars will probably have some sort of a "critical" setting to be as neutral as possible (I like my cars on the loose end of neutral, at least for front engined cars), but I can't really explain why both 1/4 AND 4/1 should be tigher/pushier than 2/3.... I assumed that one should be too loose and the other too tight, can anyone explain or elaborate how stabilisers work in GT4 (not necessarily =IRL)?

[Inspired by kerc's Golf V thread]
 
Ske
What's your opinions/experiences with rollcages and the way the affect cars' behaviour in GT4? I would assume that stiffer is better and more "neutral", and that suspension tuning will take care of the balance, but I've found no real proof of what it does to a car's handling yet...

The "Increase Rigidity" option has improved the handling of every car I've installed it on. I've tested it on many new cars. I buy (or win) the car, save the game with zero miles on the car, test it (paying very careful attention to the handling characteristics), then shut off the PS2 without saving, re-start with the brand-new, zero-mileage car, buy the stiffener option, and test it again.

The handling is better in every case. I always cite two examples:

The '03 Pescarolo tends to understeer a little, and the stiffener option reduced that significantly. It was about 1.5 seconds per lap faster on Tokyo R246 with the stiffener.

The Jag XJR-9 tends to oversteer quite a bit, and the stiffener reduced that a lot. The lap time improvement on R246 was over two seconds.

I'm sold on the stiffener, and I apply it to every car.
 
It's interesting that it reduced understeer in one car and over in another... I guess different cars react differently to it, did you find similar results in road cars too? I can definitely see the difference in high power MR and race cars, so I always apply stiffening there, but I have this feeling that it'll send any front engined road car straight to understeer hell...
 
Ske
...I have this feeling that it'll send any front engined road car straight to understeer hell...

Haven't seen it yet. That doesn't mean it can't happen, of course.

I just put it on an Aston V8 Vantage, and with stock settings on the fully-customizable suspension it handles very well.
 
They reduce Body roll, so the shift of waight in a turn is less, which means the car doesn't get slamed to one side. That's what the G-meter at the bottem of the screen is showing the force of the turn... that takes a toll on a cars structure. By applying a roll cage it will stiffen the chassis which will cut down on the G-Force causing body roll.
 
I've found the rollcage provides improved handling in about 99.9% of cars. The only exception so far in my own experience was a concept prize car of some type which was awful in the first place and only got awfuler :-) with the rollcage.
 
I agree that the rollcage nearly always improves handling and sometimes stability, but if you want a car purely for speed then I'd strongly discourage it... I've learnt from driving the 300mph Club that both the rigidity refresher plan and the Increase Rigidity options reduce the top speed of a car significantly. I always find that the softer a car is the faster it will go in a straight line, but unless you're getting a car for Like The Wind then go ahead and do it, it helps.
 
for FWDs the reduced weight transfer might actually help.

i mean, the front is doing all the work so i guess it makes sense for them to have the weight STAY there.
 
I have had good luck with stiffening on rally cars, it has easily taken a full second off lap times on Grand Canyon with the Ford Focus, Impreza, Evo, etc. - but I put it on an NSX type S-Zero once and ended up selling it because I could not get it to handle as well as my type S-Zero's that didn't have it.
 
I just added a Rollcage to my Nismo R32 S-Tune in hopes of making it drift and it worked great! It's a totally different car now easily capable of drifting stock with softer tyres up front than back..

Before the rollcage it was almost impossible with all that push understeer!
 
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