The Mojito MiTo

[Fit4aking]

Can one car fill all of the needs of one class?  It's worth a shot.  

My Alfa Romeo MiTo was destined to be a FWD star but an online outing proved that it needed some serious help.  It was pushy, oversteery, and generally no fun to drive.  The term "back to the drawing board" was an understatement.  I parked it back in my garage with a heavy sigh and vowed to return to her the minute I was done with the R3 class World Championship.  Last night I crossed the finish line with my Monte Carlo, took the gold, and the winnings, then promptly spent time looking through the parts catalog for a way to rebuild the MiTo.

Fwd, Awd, Rwd, the options seem endless.  Then it occured to me.  Three different builds, purpose driven parts selection followed by careful tuning and lots of test driving.  Could that one car fill more than one need, could it be made good enough to fill all of the needs of one class?  Power, Grip, Flowing???  Hmmm.

With calculated bias tuning the handling could be made to fall in line.  With a bit of progressive thinking I'm sure to get a handle on the FWD issues.  Hell if I can get the rear to do what I want and the front to do what I want I can surely orchestrate the two to work in some kind of harmony.  

So begins the first actual saga of Spanky's Speedshop.  The Mojito MiTo.
-Version 1.2 FWD
-Version 2.0 RWD
-Version 3.0 AWD

[Blooze]

Very Cool! 

I am currently herding an E Class MiTo around the various venues and enjoying getting dialed in.  Not nearly as ambitious as you, I decided to stick with just an AWD variation.

I am looking forward to this one!

$

[Fit4aking]

I officially kicked this project off last night.  It will run along side Season 5 and the R2 races will finance its trials and tribulations.  Race 1 at Sebring netted me a pretty penny with my Xanavi Skyline (in base trim that thing is still quick) so I made a couple of calls and was able to have 2 more MiTo's delivered to the shop while I was out running the VW races in my Scirroco.

As of right now the cars are as follows:
FWD - Platformed (E19?)
RWD - Drivetrain swap and Platformed (E18?)
AWD - Drivetrain swap and Platformed (E17?)

About 10 extra PI between each version.  The AWD and RWD weight the same [insert exact figure here] and the FWD will start out as the lightweight.  So what does Platformed mean, I'm glad you asked.  It means that all of the adjustable parts are added, minus aero.  Race Suspension, Race sway bars, Race differential, nothing else.  Not a complete build but I want ALL of my cars to have at least those parts so I can actually toon them.

Next up after R2 race number 2 is baseline testing.  I'll be QR'ing them in baseline trim to set the bar and see how far from it I can go with a proper build and toon.  I do this against the AI over 5 laps so I can recoup some cash as well as level the cars up.  Its not hotlapping them just baselining.  Once I think they are complete then I set out to do all 9 QR tracks in hotlapping fashion.  Till then I need the money!!

The only downside is that this will take away from my much needed R2 tooning so the Skyline will have to stay stock for the time being, after last nights run I doubt it will be a problem.

[Blooze]

Is the "baselining" going to be done with just the baseline parts tuned?

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[Fit4aking]

Ah!  Good question.  The baseline will tell me what's wrong with the car in general.  Typically I'll run a default alignment, which is basically F-dogs defaults. 

-1 camber ft and rr
5.3 caster

Not much else.  Its pretty close to absolute default on purpose.  I want a feel for the car in general so I can build on its weaknesses or strong points.  I try not to spend too much time baseline tooning as the parts will change the weight and settings.  I pay attention to things like gearing issues and wheelspin but I know in the back of my head that can be adjusted so I just make note of it.  If it's really bad in baseline settings I'll change things but that rarely happens.

[Spiny Anteater]

Just one question so far Fit - it sounds like you now have 3 separate Mitos sitting in your garage? Is there any reason for that rather than just saving 3 setups to one Mito? Just thought that would be the cheaper option since you'd only need one set of platform parts (a bit late now I know )

Good luck with it - Nazdakka over on fm.co.uk ran a similar project, but used the AI to set the times - the AWD was by far the fastest - here are his results:

Definitely true. I just put this on the FM.net Feedback forum.

I thought I'd do some more rigorous investigation into the suspected imbalance between AWD and other drivetrains and write up a full reproduction case. I'm using the AI driver here to minimise possible variations due to inconsistent driving on my part.

Reproduction Method:

1) Go to 'Buy Car' and buy an Alfa Romeo MiTo

2) Enter the F Class World Championships and hire an AI driver to run the first race for you (the track for this race is Sedona Club Circuit).

3) Observe the race and note down his best lap time, then quit before the end of the race.

4) Press B twice to go back out to the main menu and choose 'Upgrade'.

5) Select 'Upgrade Shop'.

6) Scroll all the way to the right to 'Conversion' and select this option.

7) Scroll to the right and select 'Drivetrain Swap'.

Swap in the RWD Drivetrain.

9) Repeat steps 2-7 with the RWD drivetrain, and then with the AWD drivetrain.

10) Note that the AWD drivetrain gets similar lap times to the FWD drivetrain, despite being 33 PI lower.

My results:

Stock drivetrain (F191, 2524lbs, 64% of the weight on the front). AI driver's best lap was 1:29.365

RWD drivetrain (F175, 2866lbs, 57% of the weight on the front). AI driver's best lap was 1:29.791

AWD drivetrain (F158, 2866lbs, 59% of the weight on the front). AI driver's best lap was 1:29.434.



From this we can see that the PI system rates the AWD MiTo too low. Despite a difference of 33PI, presumably due being 342lbs heavier and being driven by wheels that were not intended to propel the car, the AWD MiTo was able to post lap times within 0.07s of the FWD MiTo. Even more obvious is the difference between AWD and RWD - the RWD MiTo was clearly slower than the AWD one, despite a 17PI difference.

I'll be interested to see if your tuned cars yield similar results to his untuned ones.

[Fit4aking]

I do have 3 at the moment Spiney.  I thought that maybe I could get it done with just 1.  I know that would make the most sense but for the sake of sanity I decided to use three seperate cars.  Eventually I'll save all of the setups to one car and sell off the others but I wanted to be able to keep track of which parts were for each individual build instead of one pot of parts for all of them.  I'm not quite as careful with my credits as I should be with project cars but I haven't splurged on anything yet so I'm quite comfortable cash wise.

I did see that post on the daught net about proving or disproving the drivetrain parity but it never took into account that you could build the cars for a purpose and have 'the right tool'.  Sure the times on one track my favor the AWD but without stacking it up on a variety of tracks your just manipulating results for a desired effect.  I'm sure that they will have the same PI when finished but they will in deed be 3 very different cars.  I never mean to stack them against each other unless I can find one good overall track and have a shoot-out but that will be down the road, after the cars are purpose built.

[Blooze]

I only have about a third of this little test in that I just built the AWD variation.  My primary driving force was that the AWD didn't cost more in pounds than I was willing pay for the PI I got back - my logic being that I could more than make up for the added weight with the additional parts I could get.  The F class FF version of the car does have a significantly better P/W, so this will be interesting to see.

Fit, I like that idea of baselining.  I always did it with a stock car.  But, since I had already made the decision that if a car didn't have the PI available to support at least a minimum of Race Springs, ARB, and Dif, then it moved up to the next class.  i.e., I have no F Class Twingo or E Class Peugeot 206.  So, it makes sense to baseline there.  I do however, set the tires according to the drive type too - usually a pound off the driving wheels.

See there?  Old dogs learning new tricks all the time around here...

$

[Fit4aking]

Stage one of testing went down last night.  What a shocker that was.  

FWD QR - 229.813
AWD QR - 233.702
RWD QR - 232.294

Bear in mind that the PI of each car is different.  The FWD car is E203, the AWD and RWD are still in the F175 to F185 range.  (Don't have my notepad as my laptop froze on me.)  

The FWD car was the wildest of the bunch.  It had understeer as expected but the rear end was looser than the door hinge on a 69 Camaro.  Fighting both of them was a chore!  At times it could be corrected by adding throttle to pull the nose of the car back in line but that would also lead me to snap oversteer under the wrong conditions.  The Sebring sweeper comes to mind.  Funny that it would end up being the fastest car out of the box but I'm giving that up to a maybe-not-so-flawed PI system.

The AWD car was next and immediately the rear end fell in line.  I now had predictable understeer, which leads me to safer driving, so I could control the car better straight away.  It needed gearing in a bad way to take advantage of the extra grip but I left it at default to set a baseline.  The heft of the car was slightly more apparent than on the FWD version but the extra push from the rear more than added up for the increased tire load.  All in all it was very balanced but noticeably front heavy.  Far fewer problems to address than the stock drivetrain.

RWD has always been my favorite and I expected this car to be a train wreck when driven from the wrong end.  Not so!  It felt like the lightest car of the bunch, even though its a heavyweight.  The weight still being over the front end added some qualms about how free the rear would be, specially after the FWD fiasco.  Surprisingly enough it was a joy to pilot around Road Atlanta and Sebring.  Transitions well, accelerates without a lot of oversteer, and got up to speed quicker than the AWD.  Must be drivetrain modeling, or just me???  

Overall the car needs power more than grip.  The FWD version seems to desperately need aero to keep the rear inline, I'm not sure biasing the car will do much more than accentuate the understeer if it can overcome the oversteer at all.  Gearing is paramount and I may at least toss a quick final drive adjustment at all of the cars after the initial building is done.  I could barely launch and maintain top 3 against the AI, thankfully collisions were off so I could drive through them.  I'm pleased with how it is going this early on.  I just need to decide which car will fill which gap.  My thoughts are for the FWD to be the grip car, as the aero will likely slow down the top end too much.  Then use the AWD car for a flowing track due to its inherent grip advantage and not needing any aero assistance if left a tad heavy.  That leaves the RWD car for the power tracks, seems like the stereotypical breakdown of what I would do but there is a debate on how to proceed with the AWD, it could fit all of the requirements easily.  For the sake of this test I'll use all of the different drivetrains instead of settling on the easiest one to drive.  Its about tuning right?

[Blooze]

Try these quite simple changes on the FWD car before you jump out with the Aero right away.

• Knock the Bump damping back to 50% of the Rebound
• Invert the ARB to the actual Spring Bias and knock those back to about 40% of what they are.

You will be literally amazed at the change.

$

[Fit4aking]

I'll be sure to try those Blooze.  May even apply that before I build it out to test your settings.  Not that I don't believe you I just want to try them out.  FWD is my weakest driveline to toon so if it works I may not have such a disadvantage with them.

[Fit4aking]

Applied those settings and it's a completely different car Blooze.  Will definitely reconsider the build in light of new information.  Thanks Blooze.  I'll get this tuning thing down eventually.