Survey: single most effective modification to a car

Tires for sure. Slap some good tires on you car and it improves handling and acceleration better than any one mod could do.
 
Wonderful test there, FIDO. Love the organization...are you willing to try a seriously underpowered car? Like the Citroen 2CV? That would show a marginal difference; pfft...an oil change would show a difference. :lol: Meh...since it isn't fast, how about trying it at, say, George Paris V (The Night one)?
 
THanks Jetboys, I might try other cars, but I don't think there will be a huge difference.

I did do more testing with my Miata:

1 Stock Car..........................1:45.429....(after all testing, 1:43.885)
2 Race Med Tires..................1:38.884....0:06.545
5 SemiFly/3Clutch/Cshaft......1:44.545....0:00.884
6 Turbocharger1...................1:40.464....0:04.965
7 Stage 1 NA tune l..............1:41.441....0:03.988
10 Race Tranny....................1:44.992....0:00.437
add 200 ballast....................1:46.977....00:01.548

supercharger........................1:39.573....0:05.856
brakes..................................1:44.343....0:01.086
nitrous..................................1:41.108....0:04.321
semi race suspension...........01:44.295....0:01.134
brake controller 3/3.....................>1:46
brake controller 12/16.....................01:44.453....00.976
brake controller 24/1.....................01:43.854....0:01.575


The KITCHEN SINK................1:26.238....0:19.191
(super, susp, brakes, nitrous, race tires, brake ctrl, tranny, chip, fly/3clutch/shaft)

Note that I improved my stock time after the second set of tests (starting at supercharger) by 1.5s. Therefore, it must be considered that all the times could be improved by at least this much.

Do I have a conclusion? Not really, but my impressions are that the two best improvements are Tires and Power. It depends on the track/car, but tires and power will improve your times the most regardless of price. The big difference between tires and power is that you can't trade in on tires. You can, for the most part, keep adding on power. Therefore, if you are cash strapped, buy power first and save up for the best tires you can afford later.

For the Miata, the best power upgrade is the supercharger, it massively improves low end torque and makes the car faster in turns as well as straights.

After power and tires, the best improvement is weight reduction, but it is limited (can only take you so far) and gets expensive quickly.

Clutch/fly/shaft are good, they basically are power improvements.

Transmission is helpful, but really isn't that much. It helps get your power down at the right times and tuned for the track.

Suspension did not make the car much faster. Tho with much more tuning I'm sure it could have. Nevertheless, I'd say most of the improvements can be duplicated with better (more difficult to be sure) driving.

Brakes do not improve your times. (see Scaff's thread: GT4 and Brakes, p. 8. The 1s improvement above is almost certainly due to driver improvements)

Nitrous is not cheating (any more than any kind of tuning is cheating). It seems well enough balanced (and "realistic"). It's fine for hotlapping, but will not help you in a longer race. It's not better than the other power upgrades (turbo, super, NA tuning).
 
Tires. Horsepower is wasted if all you do is spin your tires; suspension upgrades don't do jack if your car is skidding all over the track, and uber brake calipers can grab those rotors as hard as they'd like, but won't make any difference if the tires slide like ice skates. Most other upgrades are worthless if your tires can't make decent contact with the ground...
 
Just an anecdotal piece of evidence for tires...

Last night I was doing Race 9 of the GT World Championship -- it's at Grand Valley Reverse, I'm pretty sure. I was in the Minolta Toyota '89, running on Racing Hard front tires, and Racing Super Hard rear tires.

I pitted with two laps to go, because the tires were seriously going off -- with only two laps to go, I put on Racing Super Softs in the front, and Racing Softs in the rear. Those tires are three "steps" faster than the tires I started the race with.

I only had one full "at speed" lap on the quicker tires, but it was a full 7 seconds faster than my fastest lap on the harder tires.
 
FIDO69
THanks Jetboys, I might try other cars, but I don't think there will be a huge difference.

I did do more testing with my Miata:

1 Stock Car..........................1:45.429....(after all testing, 1:43.885)
2 Race Med Tires..................1:38.884....0:06.545
5 SemiFly/3Clutch/Cshaft......1:44.545....0:00.884
6 Turbocharger1...................1:40.464....0:04.965
7 Stage 1 NA tune l..............1:41.441....0:03.988
10 Race Tranny....................1:44.992....0:00.437
add 200 ballast....................1:46.977....00:01.548

supercharger........................1:39.573....0:05.856
brakes..................................1:44.343....0:01.086
nitrous..................................1:41.108....0:04.321
semi race suspension...........01:44.295....0:01.134
brake controller 3/3.....................>1:46
brake controller 12/16.....................01:44.453....00.976
brake controller 24/1.....................01:43.854....0:01.575
00:19.019

The KITCHEN SINK................1:26.238....0:19.191
(super, susp, brakes, nitrous, race tires, brake ctrl, tranny, chip, fly/3clutch/shaft)
Click to expand...

It would be interesting to work this out on a value basis, ie how many dollars spent for every tenth of a second saved.

although I'd say it does depend a great deal on the car and the track - some cars are more well balanced out of the box than others and circuits with lots of straights will favour power upgrads over handling. The 'ring would be the best leveler, but to get consistant laps and then do it for each upgrade would be a mammoth task.
 
Racing tyres are all well and good, but if you have a car running on stock suspension all that grip can be wasted as its more than the suspension can cope with especially if the car its fitted to isn't particulary sporty to start with ... the car just leans all over the place.
 
I think it goes without saying that some mods are meant to go hand in hand with another, like suspension and tires, or power and drivetrain mods (flywheel, driveshaft etc). These are synergistic situations where you will gain more by combining both mods than you would gain by adding the gains together. 2 different 50 hp mods will reduce your time by 1 sec each, but both together (100hp extra) will not reduce your time by 2 sec. HOWEVER, racing tires (5 secs) and race suspension (2 secs) MIGHT reduce time by 7 seconds (maybe more)because their very nature is to be used together. Each becomes more effective because of the other. Further, weight reduction may have given you 2 secs better from stock, but doing it after tires and suspension may give you an additional 3 seconds, again because it's effect is multiplied by the other mods. And those are experiments I am NOT doing.
 
I agree, Skicrush. And yes, it would take REAL dedication to do the tests, and then properly pull out the results. Real good multivariable statistics would be needed.

In any case, I did do the "Kitchen Sink" test, and compared it to my improvements on a part by part basis. And surprisingly, it was pretty damn close. 19.191s improvement by doing all the mods together versus 19.019s improvement by adding each improvement individually.

I'd almost say it was blind dumb luck, but GT4's just a videogame, I also suspect that there is a fair amount of independent linearity to the game.
 

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