Survey: single most effective modification to a car

OK, my vote is Laguna Seca for the test run. And I'm thinking a 350Z or RX-8--FR, mid range power, weight, and decent handling. Fairly average in all respects--will give us a good idea of what single upgrade gives the best results. I can't do this until I get a little time, but this is what I think needs to be done. Some other cars might be better, but I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Reset it back to stock after every trial. Here's the lineup.

1. Stock, stock. Tires that come with it (sport med, prolly). Yes, has an oil change.
2. Tires. Racing med? No softies--we're trying to be practical.
3. Suspension. Sport or Race, but leave it how it comes. Too many avariables if you tweak it.
4. Racing chip.
5. Flywheel/ triple clutch/carbon driveshaft.
6. Stage 1 Turbo.
7.Stage 1 NA.
8. Stage 1 WR.
9. Stage 2 WR.

Now, never having unequipped a weight reduction or NA tune, I'm not sure if you can UNequip them. That's why they're last. I combined #5 (drivetrain components) and added stage 2 weight (because stage 1 is so cheap)--just trying to get some cost parity (yes, with those expensive tires). I won't have time to get to this for 2 weeks (since I think it all needs to be done at the same time), but if anyone else wants to try it, I'm sure there are a couple of people interested in seeing the results.
 
Oke i find the most important things are:

1. Racing Brakes(This way you can make up seconds and have much better overtaking oppertunities)
2.Tyres (Much more grip and higher cornering speeds)
3.Others ( Roll cage and weight can make your car an racing car)
4. Engine and drivetrain(Cause if you go in the red revs all the time after youre Engineupgrade, you might as well leave the Engineupgrade cause your HP will drop due overreving)
5.Suspension
 
Depends on the car:

For regular cars, racing tires, brakes and suspension are the best mods.

For race cars, the Stage 4 turbo puts them over the edge, especially since that's one of only a few mods you can do on them. Everything else is already there. The Stage 4 turbo takes a Minolta Toyota that loses the Infineon endurance race in 4th place and turns it into a car that wins the LeMans I 24hr by 4 laps against an identical field of cars.
 
Come on, guys! I have a brand new baby and am applying to graduate school! Don't any of you guys in school have some time to test this stuff out?

Oh yeah, and I thought I should maybe add brakes to the above list, but better brakes w/o better tires are usually pointless (at least they are in RL).
 
I was gonna post gearbox but then remembered i dont do this mod till my car "Has big enough feet to fill the boots". No point having a car that either goes 200 mph but takes a week to get there or one that does 0-60 in 4 secs and tops out at 90 mph. So if i could only do one mod to a stock car it would be suspension.
 
As someone who has done many upgrades to my Evo for autocross competition, I can give these rankings for an actual real-life competition car:

1. Tires. Huge huge impact in performance. A car which is an also-ran on stock tires can become a dominant class winner on dedicated race tires. If you've never actually driven a car on dedicated race rubber, you wouldn't understand -- the tires' grip and response is so much better that you almost need to learn to drive all over again.

2. Adjustable suspension. Don't like the car's handling? Twist a knob and fix it... :)

3. Power modifications. I've got about 380 HP in my car, up from 271 stock -- in addition, mid-range torque is greatly improved. Still, even an extra 100+ HP only ranks third after tires and suspension.

4. Weight reduction. My car would be roughly a Stage 1 weight reduction... Race weight is about 220 pounds (100 kg) below the advertised curb weight.

5. Brakes. I've upgraded the pads and rotors only -- pads for increased fade resistance, and the rotors for weight savings. If I were to run the car regularly on a road course, brakes would become much more important -- but for autocross, speeds generally don't exceed 70 MPH, so the brakes are not stressed too badly.
 
A lot of people say racing brakes, but I find these are only needed on very fast cars - they're a waste on stock and lightly modified cars (unless your driving style relies on hard braking at the end of every straight). Likewise soft tyres are too easy. again they are a waste on lightly modded cars where the car will never exceed the grip provided.

as has been pointed out it depends a lot on the car. the right LSD can transform an under-steering pig into something that can be steered with accelerator, making a huge difference to how it feels and performs. Suspension is also a key factor in reducing lap times, but as all these things work together it's very hard to say one single thing that works for all cars.

My vote is for full transmission, as someone said it lets you extract the maximum potential out of any given car whatever other mods it might have.
 
The single most effective thing would be to buy a better car. Nuff said. Either that, or get one of your buddies really drunk, tell him to take your car out to the country and burn it as you call it in stolen, then sit back, wait for the insurance money to come, and walk away from racing forever, cause if all you can do is one mod to your car, then you were obviously too poor to race in the first place.
 
First three thing s I grab are:

1) Weight Reduction Stage 1. Reduced tire wear, better acceleration, easier handling. Nothing has this many advantages.
2) Tires (depending on the race you want to enter, since some require sports tires, but slicks are truly amazing. The car just snaps to wherever you point it and it reduces the time your tires spin by a lot even when you reduce TCS).
3) Racing Brakes. Not much beats stopping power for cutting times down.
 
I thought this was a poll.

If it was, I would say tires, because most of the production cars in the game were tuned on N2 radials (although with the NSX and R34 it might be N3 street tires). But then again, all cars are sold with sports medium or better, so it's hard to say.

In real life: tires, then usually the intake/exhaust system.

In GT4: Either suspension of some kind (if you can tune it), or a sports computer.

The reason I say CPU is because it is extremely cheap and improves every aspect of engine performance. These two traits give it an outstanding cost:gain ratio.

Another super cheap, super effective upgrade is a semi-racing flywheel.

Only use racing flywheels when absolutely necessary.

Semi-racing alone costs less than $1000 and boosts engine response through the roof.

Anyways..

-My 2 cents.


Edit: I forgot about weight reduction.

That's extremely important as well. Even if you're going to do more later, start out by doing Stage 1.

1500 bucks usually yields a good 50-100kg removed from the car.

Keep in mind that weight balance is never affected in the game, except with ballasts.

/edit
 
I would have to say tyres as they are the single thing (apart from an oil change) that will effect every car in the game in a significant way.

Uprating you tyres will allow you to accelerate, brake and corner much more effectively.

After that it very much depends on the car in question as which direction I go in, as the basic characteristics of the car will dictate what needs doing to it; however I will generally go for handling mods before I go for excessive power increase.

Remember that lowering weight will inprove you power to weight ratio (as will increasing power), but it will also improve you cars handling and generally lower tyre wear.
 
I would say weight reduction stage 1 because it has an influence on everything BUT it's just an opinion not a fact.
Better tires would be my 2nd choice. I noticed that on an untuned car adding a sport transmission makes a great improvement too because the power being low one need to have a short transmission in order to exploit the weak power to the maximum.
On an FF car, a 1 slip limiter is almost a must in order to have a faster exit from the curve.
Interesting project: Get a new untuned car and make some time trial tests with just 1 single mod at a time finishing with the weight reduction mod because it cannot be removed.
 
Scaff
I would have to say tyres as they are the single thing (apart from an oil change) that will effect every car in the game in a significant way.

Uprating you tyres will allow you to accelerate, brake and corner much more effectively.

After that it very much depends on the car in question as which direction I go in, as the basic characteristics of the car will dictate what needs doing to it; however I will generally go for handling mods before I go for excessive power increase.

Remember that lowering weight will inprove you power to weight ratio (as will increasing power), but it will also improve you cars handling and generally lower tyre wear.
Click to expand...
That is so true! Can not agree more 👍 ;)
 
I'm no sucker...

If I buy a car, I always make sure I have the money to go ALL THE WAY!! :)
LOL
I don't like half upgraded cars or any non-upgraded cars in my garage...
Right now I have GT4 won and complete and with about $13,000,000 :)
You see, every Gran Turismo so far, I have always gone until I get ALL the cars in the game... :)
I did it in GT2, GT3, and now I'm aiming for GT4, and maybe I'll do that in GT5 too :dopey:
hehe
but with the case of upgrading...I never worry about that stuff :)
It's either "all the way, or you're out the next day" :dunce:
 
L28eT
I'm no sucker...

If I buy a car, I always make sure I have the money to go ALL THE WAY!! :)
LOL
I don't like half upgraded cars or any non-upgraded cars in my garage...
Right now I have GT4 won and complete and with about $13,000,000 :)
You see, every Gran Turismo so far, I have always gone until I get ALL the cars in the game... :)
I did it in GT2, GT3, and now I'm aiming for GT4, and maybe I'll do that in GT5 too :dopey:
hehe
but with the case of upgrading...I never worry about that stuff :)
It's either "all the way, or you're out the next day" :dunce:
Click to expand...
That is awesome and all, but has nothing to do with this thread. :dunce:
 
Biased turkey
I would say weight reduction stage 1 because it has an influence on everything BUT it's just an opinion not a fact.
Better tires would be my 2nd choice. I noticed that on an untuned car adding a sport transmission makes a great improvement too because the power being low one need to have a short transmission in order to exploit the weak power to the maximum.
On an FF car, a 1 slip limiter is almost a must in order to have a faster exit from the curve.
Interesting project: Get a new untuned car and make some time trial tests with just 1 single mod at a time finishing with the weight reduction mod because it cannot be removed.
Click to expand...

BT, if you follow the 'car won't stop quick enough' link in my sig you will find that a number of us have started this with regard to stoping distances, focusing on tyre choice, weight reduction and sports brakes.

You may be interested in the results, as it explains why I woulld go for tyres before weight reduction.

Could not agree with you more on the FF and LSD point, it makes a huge difference to FF cars, it transformed my tuned Integra Type R (DC2).
 
1 - tires

2 - weight reduction

3 - suspension

4 - drivetrain(complete)

5 - brakes

power upgrade is always the last thing I change
 
Tires

All the other mod's mean exactly nothing if your tires won't hook up.

That being said, I most enjoy running all my cars on N3's. I equate them to the ultra high performance street tires on most production sports cars.

But to see a drastic decrease in lap times, throw on some R3's and you'll cut out a ton of time on any track.

idle
 

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