Let's Chase Blooze - Redux

[Spiny Anteater]

I noticed you're well up in the P2P's Pete, don't think I'll be catching you overall for a long while.

 Had the same problem as you up the hill with the lack of torque - if you look at the times you'll see I'm probably about equal with Blooze on the uphill stages. But that little 914/6 is absolutely awesome going downhill. Those times are easily my best positions on any tracks , in fact I think it's the only car I've currently got in the top 100 on any tracks (unless you count the PT Cruiser which I got top FWD 100 drifters at Boomslang while messing around drifting). I think Lady Luck dealt me a good hand for Kaido, I can certainly see why in AWD format it's considered a Leaderboard Car - after all I found it brilliant in RWD format.

[Blooze]

Wow!  I'm going to have my work cut out for me when I get back to playing Blooze instead of BucksToon.  First thing I'm gonna do is run out and buy me a PT Cruiser... eh... Mongoose.  Maybe I can catch up to Spiny a little in the Snakes.

The stock gearing in the GSX leaves a little to be desired.   Particularly, the hole between 2^nd and 3^rd.  It is just too big.  Down shifting from 3 to 2 will over-rev your engine if you aren't careful, and you really take an mph hit for doing it.  Going the other way, 2 to 3 - you feel like you shut your engine off.  The first half of the Old Hill climb on Kaido is a mess, 2^nd is too much and 3^rd is not quite enough  - you end up grinding it in 3^rd, and it never really takes off till you pass the bar half way up.

I think adjusting the gearing so that you stay in the upper 10% of the Hp range is the best... if you have adjustability - which I don't in the E Class car. 

The other option is enough Hp so that you don't have to dip into second...

$

[Spiny Anteater]

Blooze, just to make sure you read that right, it's the 914/6 which is a great little car. The PT Cruiser isn't too bad either, it's certainly a good car around the snakes, especially considering it's here in FWD form. I even managed to beat Warped in a couple of places.

[Blooze]

Oh, I got it.  The first sentence was designed to recognize the Porsche...  it was just me being air headed...

$

[Blooze]

So I logs onto the Daught GNet leaderboards tonight and checked out how things were going in the E Class chase.  Ole Buck finally got done with his thing, and I am getting ready to do a bunch of building and testing, and I wanted to see if Spiny AntEater had finished off his last track yet.  He had, and now he's a quite respectable #191 out of nearly 1.9 million racers.  Not bad, huh?

Now I have 4 guys in front of me in E Class, well - sort of... one of 'em is me.  Anyways, I got some work to do.

I built out the first of my No Tranny convertions today.  I rebuilt my Ford Fiesta with the stock transmission, which in this particular case (AWD Conversion) is a Sport Transmission Five Speed.  The resultant build has about 20 more Hp, another 200 lbs, and bogs like hell off the line.  I wasn't too hopeful of how the thing was going to turn out - specially with it's really piss-poor benchmark scores; 0-60 in 8.4 seconds and the G@120 is the lowest of my E class bunch - an .89...

But I has a go at the tracks that I had run earlier this year quite successfully with the same car.

• First thing I do is knock 3 seconds off my BucksToon fresh Amalfi agrigate.  Damn...
• So next, I run up to Kaido and take a pass at the A Stage.  Danged if I don't knock a full 3 seconds off of that too!  That is even 2.2 seconds faster than Spiny's Porsche, and let me tell you... Spiny kicked Kaido's ass with that Porsche.  Now, I'm starting to get a little giddy.
• Alrighty - so now I head out to Italy and take a run at the A Stage of Positano.  I'm a little disappointed here - I only picked up 2.3 seconds.
• The Snakes - yeppers... I knocked 6 seconds off the first 4 tracks.  Even edged Spiny out by .080 on Boomslang.
• Okay, so let's see how the little Ford does on the big laps - .  I picked up 53 seconds off both Kaidos and both Positanos and that was more or less taking them cold, one lap each.

And all the while the little car feels like a dog.  But I've watched it against the ghosts, and I've really had to scramble more than a few times to stay out of the fences or off the walls because the car is sneaky fast.

I got me a few more of my old E builds to try this No Tranny deal with, and a couple F cars that I want to bring up to E with it as well.  By the time I get it all sorted out, D Class should be a lot of fun!

Here's my latest Chaser sheet...  

The Big Board has been cleared for October.  There were a number of folks who cleared a number of seconds last month.  That goofy Buck kid was the biggest - clearing all of E Class - followed real close by QMole and Spiny.  There were also a number of folks who took a zero for the month.  I hope they are just tired of Forza and not having trouble of some sort.

$

[Spiny Anteater]

Not quite finished E Class yet, but getting pretty close - just 4 tracks to go and they already have clean times to beat. And as they are generally times by decent cars I'm not expecting to improve much. I also have to admit that the "Chasers" spreadsheet was a bit of a kick in the gonads today - all that work gone into the hotlaps and I've gained a grand total of 6 places

Great work with the Fiesta Blooze - 3 seconds on a P2P is a sizeable chunk of time to make up. I had a feeling you were going to catch the 914/6 going uphill though, it felt a little underpowered there and I could see you were within striking range

As I said, 4 tracks to go so I guess it's time for an end of season report...

[Blooze]

I also have to admit that the "Chasers" spreadsheet was a bit of a kick in the gonads today - all that work gone into the hotlaps and I've gained a grand total of 6 places

Are you talking about on the Big Board - or Overall?  I have been following that somewhat and have noticed that you are moving at a pace that pretty well keeps you in the same position.  I think I will pay a little more attention to that as you finish up D Class.  My guestimate is that you have around 37 tracks to go.  

I have a similar "issue" working as well.  Since having hi-balled through the Hotlaps, and then building my Gaposis system, I have knocked 1600 seconds off my Circuits time, and another 800 seconds off my P2P time.  And I have dropped rather systematically from 26^th to 108^th while doing it...

Ah well, consider that at least the rate of droppage slows as you move closer to the top.

Good job on E Class btw...  I am going to have my hands full finding 4 minutes in my E Class times.

$

[Spiny Anteater]

I was going on the "Big Board" circuits for my position change. I know exactly what you mean about dropping back in positions even as your time improves. I slipped back to about 840th overall, then hit the snakes and with all those newly run tracks rose up about 60 places. I'm dropping back again now.

I have most of the "normal" tracks run in D Class, so expect progress to be slow and erratic as I'll still be having a shot even at the ones already run. The biggest changes will come when I hit Benchmark and the Snakes as they aren't run in career and rarely online. Most of the other tracks are likely to be seconds or 10 minutes+seconds with only a few exceptions. Doing the boring bits first though - ovals are bad enough but the drag races are just soooooo tedious. And I hardly make any money on them either - probably going to end up spending about 6 times as much getting the Audi ready for that as I make from it.

[Blooze]

Well I am getting ready to have the most epic of Epic Vertical Hotlap Runs.  I have built up quite a gaggle of E Class cars - all the way from my venerable GSX to the Spiny Cruiser and BBQ's Lil Debil.  Thanks to both of those fellers for sharing.  My new E Class darling is the Mitzubishi FTO FP with the AWD conversion.  I got it built out and tuned yesterday.  Then I went ran the QR tracks.  When I was finished my new PB E Class QR was 215.781 - that is 1.124 seconds faster than my previous best.  Those of you who have messed with the QR business will recognize how much of a big deal that is, specially down in these lower classes.  Until I ran this car, you could cover my top three with 4 tenths.

However, not all the fat ladies have had their shot.  I have been updating the builds on a number of cars with No Race Tranny (NRT), and the setups with the Spiny Fix, and so far a number of them have only been run on Atlanta Short.  

Like I said - Epic...  as in take a while.  I hope I don't crap out on it - I really would like to see the results.

I still have a few more new cars to add, as well as some more upgrade...

That will make it even more Epicer...

$

[Spiny Anteater]

I hope you enjoy the Cruiser Blooze, although I suspect you may find it a little oversteery for your tastes. One thing I am sure of though is that you know exactly how to tune it into your preferences.

As I said down in my garage thread, it was built specifically to take on the snakes. That makes the tune even more oversteery as on the tight, twisty circuits I generally aim to get as good a front end as I can without making the backend so twitchy I lose time. Of course, that balance changes between drivers and cars...

Good work on the QR. While I've not done a set QR myself, I know from the gaps from the hotlapping that gaining over a second on those tracks is a big improvement.

[BarbecuePete]

Well I am getting ready to have the most epic of Epic Vertical Hotlap Runs.  I have built up quite a gaggle of E Class cars - all the way from my verneable GSX to the Spiny Cruiser and BBQ's Lil Debil.  Thanks to both of those fellers for sharing. 

$

It's ages since I ran the lil' Devil, I think that was one of if not the first car I built when the game came out so will be interesting to see how it stacks up after a year... I suspect you will have issues with oversteer more so than Spiny's Cruiser though, especially in any fast sweepers, it was better setup for tight twisty tracks where it will turn in tight off throttle and then allow you to get on the gas early through the exit...

[chuckrateez]

Blooze,

   Just wanted you to know that I'm still out here chasing.     I just made my first pass through A.  Got some low-hanging fruit to pick off, but at least I've got times in all tracks.  So I've completed F-A, both P2P and circuits.

   Next I'm on to the S P2P and circuits.  Never really spent much time up there, so we'll see how that goes.

   Thanks for giving me something concrete to aim for.  It's kept things fresh after some of the drudgery of career mode.


      Chuck
 

[Blooze]

Good job there Chuck - I knew you were knocking off some times from the Big Board, but I didn't know you had cleared half the classes...    

I think I have most everything updated on my sheet.

Oh, and I got ya back in E Class...

It was kind of a toss-up between the Lil-Devil and the Spiny PT for the oversteer sweepstakes, but I think Spiny's rig won.  More than just a few times the lift off oversteer on that thing sent me reeling.  Specially on what used to be called Copperhead.  That high speed braking at the switchback down at the end of the straight seemed to get me everytime.

I am going to be trying both cars as is on the Targa tracks later on.  Then I think I will look into seeing if I can make them more compatible to my olde-faught driving style.

I have gone sub-slope in E Class and I am still about 150 seconds behind Spiny.  I don't spect I'll be catching him anytime soon...  

The latest version of my sheet is attached...

$

[chuckrateez]

Good job there Chuck - I knew you were knocking off some times from the Big Board, but I didn't know you had cleared half the classes...    

I think I have most everything updated on my sheet.

Oh, and I got ya back in E Class...

   Cool.     I'll have to check back there once I'm done with S. 

   I'm in the S P2P now, and it's a bit odd.  So far I've been mostly running the Lambo LP640, mostly because I don't really have anything in S class, and I ran it in some of the high speed tracks in A (it was a beast on the Ring).  It's definitely strange to be running that thing on Kaido, but it's doing pretty well.  It's pretty well maxed out on the basic upgrades, and I've got a standard F'dog tune on it.  As big as it is, it's surprisingly nimble.

   I ran the LB Viper on a couple of the Kaido stages as well.  I don't know ... it's fast, but I don't enjoy driving it like I do the Lambo.  It just feels ... squirrely (sp?) ... not planted ... maybe I need to experiment with a Blooze tune for it.   


      Chuck
     

[Spiny Anteater]

Nice work Chuck - I see you've passed me overall so well done. I think my progress may be slow for a while now - I've run quite a bit already in D Class so will end up rerunning a load of tracks I already have times on. It may seem odd to do that, but it's surprising how competitive even the most unlikely cars can be once in a while.

Take Amalfi, D Class. The randomiser gave me the BMW X5 which sounds like an absolute nightmare combination. But, with full fat slicks, full downforce, no extra power and sport weight reduction it was surprisingly good. OK, you won't see it on the leaderboard, but it got within half a second of the times I got (really didn't expect a 1:03 around here_. I reckon this could be a good online contender around here - 4WD means it goes launches brilliantly (if a little sea-sicky) and the huge size of the thing means nobody should be able to see a way around it here

Sadly, now Benchmark is out of the way it will be only a few tracks where I make signifcant gains, probably until the Sidewinders before I start shooting up the boards again.

...
It was kind of a toss-up between the Lil-Devil and the Spiny PT for the oversteer sweepstakes, but I think Spiny's rig won.  More than just a few times the lift off oversteer on that thing sent me reeling.  Specially on what used to be called Copperhead.  That high speed braking at the switchback down at the end of the straight seemed to get me everytime.

I am going to be trying both cars as is on the Targa tracks later on.  Then I think I will look into seeing if I can make them more compatible to my olde-faught driving style.

...

Blooze, there is a knack to driving the Cruiser. It responds very well to braking "late and straight" as they say, coming off the brakes then chucking it into the corner once you're almost down to your desired speed and utilising the back end swing to get excellent turn in. As soon as possible get on the power to get a good exit out of the corner.

The advantage of FWD is that you only need to get on the power if the oversteer gets too great. With the Cruiser, I've actually had it past 90 degrees yet flooring the throttle has been enough to get it pointing the right way again. Obviously, that's not the way to a fast lap though...