Heavens... Here it is lunch time already. Sort of. Forza wise, I been busier than the proverbial one legged feller this week. I finally decided to just shut the box down and catch some stuff up. I got posting to do, I got spreadsheets that are requiring attention. This being a multimillion dollar racing organization all by yourself can be taxing.
If this segment were to be titled, I would be trying to come up with some cute variation of the old saw about old dawgs and new tricks and that sort of thing. I was talking recently about the Toon that I bought from Helisan, and how there was a bunch of stuff that was uncommon for me to see. I have had a pretty well established regimine for when it comes to upgrades and tuning and such so I find I was a prime candidate for getting my eyeballs opened up, along with my mind. Ruts are a terrible thing.
There was no doubt about it. Helisan's Evo VI build was faster in the A Class everything than anything in my garage - and definitely faster than my A Class GSX. Disassembling the thing and scatterin' the parts all over the garage showed two major deviations from my norm... On a car that started out as a low C, the A build had stock transmission and clutch, and it had the Sport compound rather than slicks. So I set about studying the thing with respect to my GSX builds, mostly cause I know the why's and what nots to the various builds from E to A.
First of all, there is the Slicks. The Evo has a G@120 of 1.24 with the Sport tires, my GSX has a 1.21 with slicks. A little investigation shows why. The Evo weighs in at 2261 with full reduction, the GSX weighed 2630. There is very little play left - some body parts and the roll cage is about it, but that still only finds another 70 pounds or so. The other biggie is tire width. The widest tires for the GSX is 235 mm - the Evo is able to fit 265 mm under it's fenders. When I checked the affect of swapping out the Slicks for Sport tires, the G@120 dropped 4 points to a 1.17. There was just no place left to get grip other than the Slicks, so I decided I would have to keep those. Besides, the swap only freed up 7 Pi.
On the other hand, swapping out the tranmission and clutch for stock freed up 20 or so Pi, enough so that I was able to upgrade the Turbo for an additional 34 Hp, with enough left over to go ahead with the Sport Clutch... (the shift time was taking a serious hit and a slow shifter bugs the hell out of me.) Loosing the weight savings of the transmission and the added weight of the Turbo added 43 lbs to the GSX' curb weight. The P/W improved 10 points but I lost one point of grip.
But... I knocked 2 seconds off the GSX' QR. In fact, I beat the Evo's QR by a few hundreths! I set a top 1000 Atlanta time with it as well. It isn't quite as good as the Evo in the twisties, but it had a full half second on both the Drag and the Oval, and about 20 mph on the top end. I haven't run it all out yet, but the GSX is definitely going to do better on some of the "Power" tracks.
So, my habit of going for the Race Tranny as soon as possible in a series of builds seems to need to be reexamined. I checked, the E class GSX had a Race Transmission by D Class, Slicks didn't show up untill B class.
Now, the Aero parts and increased Hp worked out pretty good for the overall gearing, but I can see a need for perhaps getting the Sport Transmission in some cases. The Street Trans mission is good for quite a few tenths on the shift time and a small performance increase, so that is a possibility as well. The Pi cost vs. the Performance gain of the Clutch packages will be examined more closely as well. No more of this grab the race clutch without giving it a thought. The change in all aspects of performance using the stock gearing was just too big to ignore. I am gonna be going back through a whole piss-pot load of lower class builds, not as a major project, but as I move from class to class - cars will be getting reconfigured.
I spent a great deal of my time this last week pointedly working on technique. This thing where I get all rigid and tight when turning in on big shut down corners and on long sweepers, has just got to go. I scrub all sorts of speed because I am too wound up to react and I usually have to drop extra gears and damn near stop to keep out of the wall. It is improving, but it is definitely going to require seat time to get it second nature.
I'm all hot to get the R3 GT3 Hotlap Cup kicked off - I will be working on that quite a bit this week. I have quite a few cars left to build.
Ole Buck finally got done with A class. He's currently at the top of the A Class Chasers board - I don't spect that will last too long.
Another project for this week is to try to ressurrect my Storefront. I got an idea or two or three... it would go better if I could paint worth a flip. And I am going to have to quit all the photo procrastinatin' too. Anyhow, the first release on the startup is going to be the A Class GSX.
Then there is a story that I have been working on and I am going to need a bunch of guys to help me out with some pictures, besides all the business with getting the thing written in the first place.
What a flash in the pan this Forza game is...
Heh, I see no end in sight...
$
