Totally Random - D Class 2007 Civic Type R

[Spiny Anteater]

Time has come for us here at Spiny's Slow Tunes to start on this hotlapping lark. Thing is, I didn't want to be one of these folks who jumps in whatever car is at the top of the leaderboard. Instead, I set myself the task of taking a car picked totally at random and trying to make it competitive, or at least respectable.

First off, the random number generator selected D Class. Then I used the same process to pick another car. Now, it could easily have given me a MkII Golf, a Chevelle or some other car which would be amazing on some tracks, and average on others. But, it gave me the 2007 Civic:

In itself, it's not a bad little car. But, in D Class it has one glaring flaw. The PI starts at something like 390 (I forget exactly) so you can't exactly load it up with goodies. In fact, you can't really load it up with anything - the only way to get the platform upgrades on is to add the front and rear spoilers. As a result, this tops out at 137 on the Speedway, and substantially less on the other tracks.

To give you some idea of what it's lacking, the ratings when built are 3.8 for Speed, and only 3.0 for acceleration, although obviously this is better once you tune the gearbox.

So, my aim is to get this sows ear of a car and turn it into, if not a silk purse, at least somthing that can live with the competition. It will never be a world-beater, but so far the results are encouraging. Hot-laps show the car being around 1000-1500th place for a number of laps. But, it seems to be an even better racer getting a number of top 100 times in exhibition, and even 48th place at a power track like Sebring  Obviously Jay's times on Exhibition are out of reach (I haven't beaten one yet!) - the question is "Can I manage to get close to Blooze on D Class?

[Spiny Anteater]

Just figures on here I'm afraid, not much in the way of discussion, but there is a time if you want to see how your D-Classer compares

Having run all the times, I've now got a Power Rank (total for Sunset Infield Short, Silverstone National and Sebring Short) for this:

218.449 seconds

The Power Build:

Power Upgrades: None (Not enough PI)
Handling: All race, except for stock weight reduction
Wheels and Tyres: Volk TE37 rims (in a fetching plum colour), everything else stock
Aero: All parts added

That gives you a car with:
Power: 204 bhp
Torque: 142 lb-ft (wow!)
Weight: 2758 lbs

The tune (F/R):
Tyres: 28/30
Camber: -0.8/-0.7
Toe: 0/0
Caster: 5.0
ARBs: 14.4/9.66
Springs: 434.8/401.3
Ride Height: 5.1/5.1
Rebound: 9.8/7.3
Bump: 4.9/3.7
Aero: 45/50 (minimum)
Brake Balance: 43% Front
Brake Pressure: 94%
Diff: 40% Accel/0% Decel

Gears (Nurburgring tune - different tracks are run with differeny gear ratios)
FD: 5.04
1-6: 2.89, 1.99, 1.51, 1.20, 1.00, 0.85

So, what sort of performance does that translate into. Well, the benchmark for this tune is:

0-60: 6.253s
0-100: 17.339s
Top Speed: 138.9 mph

60-0: 112.7 ft
100-0: 307.2 ft

Lateral g's @ 60mph: 0.97
@120 mph: 0.95

And that is enough for a time for Nurburgring of: 9:02.155

[Spiny Anteater]

Turns out that with this car there is almost no difference between the power and flowing builds. The only change was to add full downforce for the flowing build (except for at Motegi & Motegi East which used half downforce). In hindsight, perhaps I should have used the half downforce at Maple Valley full (both ways) as well, but the next project is calling.

The Flowing Rank for this car ended up at 164.176. As with the rest I'd say this is acceptable, but nothing spectacular.

[Spiny Anteater]

Nearly though all the times now, and the Twisty Rank is 161.030 seconds (2:41.030) Again, nothing spectacular, but still better than I was expecting when I started out.

Tyres: 28/30
Camber: -0.8/-0.7
Toe: 0/0
Caster: 5.0
ARBs: 14.40/9.66
Springs: 426.3/409.3
Ride Height: 5.2/5.2
Rebound: 9.6/7.4
Bump: 4.8/3.7
Aero: 125/150 (max)
Brakes: 43/94
Diff: 40/0

Gears (for King Cobra Forwards)
FD: 5.04
1-6: 2.89/2.02/1.57/1.33/1.15/1.03

Benchmark:
0-60: 6.300s
0-100: 17.645
Top Speed: 122.9
60-0: 111.6
100-0: 299.8
g's @ 60mph: 0.98
g's @ 120mph: 0.98

The benchmark immediately shows the effect of adding that wing with the lateral g's this car can pull rising, especially at 120mph. That's probably a bit of a moot point though, as this tune is unlikely to ever reach that speed. In effect, this is a 6-speed  build for King Cobra. However, even though the parts are the same, the shorter gearing and extra wing does seem to have improved the braking, although the acceleration does seem to have suffered a bit, probably from a mixture of that extra wing and the extra gear changes.

Anyone who hasn't been bored senseless by the wall of figures there will notice that there isn't a lot of difference between the twisty build and the power build. Certainly, all the parts are the same, although if you were to go into the realms of engine swaps I think Ske's Prelude engine build/tune would probably be a bit quicker - if you could stay off the kerbs those grippier tyres could really come into their own on twisty stuff. The main difference apart from the aero was a tweak I introduced to feuerdog's set-up way back in the Acura challenge on .net when Drift showed how much faster you could be with the back end getting loose in an FWD car. For quite a while I probably overdid that, especially on the lower powered cars such as this one where getting it sideways could kill your momentum. So, I've reigned it in and have really just done the equivalent of shifting 1% of the weight from the front to the rear. It makes the car slightly less stable in the faster corners (although here that's not an issue really) which is why I don't do that for the Power or Flowing Tracks, but it does help turn-in by a surprising amount on the twistier stuff

[fndrbndr]

Interesting.  I guess it kind of flies in the face of what you're attempting here, but my approach is typically to take a car and figure out what it does well, then cater to that.  I know you're not just going for scoreboard times, but taking any of my Tiny Terrors to Nissan would be tempting the stroke gods for me.  I've been toying with the idea of taking this car into C, my emptiest class at the moment.  What random number generator did you use?  Were you only considering cars you already owned, or were you willing to purchase one you didn't own yet?  Sorry, randomness always intrigues me, since achieving it can be more difficult than people realize.

[Blooze]

I too am curious about your selection device.

I like the flavor of this one.  The measure of character.

I'm rootin' for ya, man!

$

[Spiny Anteater]

Ah, the selection device. A good ole combination of Excel and an old Sharp calculator. So, here goes for how the random selection works (ok, I know that it's not truly random, just an algorithm, but it's as near to random as I can do here).

Step 1: The cars are arranged on my monster Excel spreadsheet, one class to a worksheet and the cars are arranged vertically, with the lap times arranged horizontally (does this make sense? it doesn't make any difference really if it doesn't). That gives 10 worksheets.

Step 2: Using the random number generator on the calculator (it calculates a random number between 0.000 and 0.999 so you need to multiply by 10) choose your worksheet. In this case, I ended up with 6.x as the random number, so went with the 6th worksheet which happened to be D Class (they are arranged U,S,A,B,C,D,R1,R2,R3,R4[All]) with the [All] sheet containing all the times set.

Step 3: Use the calculator to generate a new random number (the standard is to 3 decimal places, but for this one I use the "Y" memory which stores it to 8 decimal places for greater equality between the cars. As the cars are arranged vertically, each car is in a numbered row. For Class D, there are currently 71 cars, plus a header row, so I multiply the random number by 72 to gain the number of the row which contains the car to be run. The sheets are arranged by QR, then Total time, then by "Car" (i.e. manufacturer then model), although on some of them the DLC cars are still tacked on the end. That's what happened in this case, so when the result of the random number generator was 66, it ended up smack bang in the middle of the DLC cars. Hence, a randomly chosen 07 Civic, or at least i had no control over which car I would be driving

And to answer the other questions, I am in a way going for the scoreboard, I just didn't fancy running the same car as the masses (not that that was ruled out though, just unlikely to happen). When I've run it at every track, I'll leave it at whichever build seemed to suit it best (actually, with the limitations of parts, that could be more whichever tune suits it best ). At the moment, I'm expecting that to be the flowing tune, but things may change. The target is to try and get the total time with the car good enough for the top 500 in D-Class. That will require the Excel sheet as there's some times out there which this car is incapable of catching

As for only running cars I own, it's a bit of a moot point really. I've been thinking about doing something like this for a while, so when I got the "All cars" achievement, I just kept them instead of doing the usual big sell-off. The only cars which are currently ruled out of the equation are the unicorns, the pre-order Nissan, the Subaru S204 and the Saleen S281E as I don't have one and can't get hold of one easily.

And, if you want something to compare to, this car ran 1:03.876 around the Speedway

[fndrbndr]

Well, you have a rando D-classer, but not a random car.  For the selection to be truly random, there would have to be exactly the same number of cars in each class.  Assuming that's not the case, you don't technically have a random selection.  This is admittedly a nitpick from someone who spent last semester in the stats class from Hell and the last two years working on a project that required, among other things, preserving randomness through multiple iterations of a sample.

[Spiny Anteater]

Very true, but to be totally random I could have just taken the results from the [All] worksheet, which has all 1200+ car and class variations on it (although I suspect some of those on the U-Class will be unbuildable )

The problem with doing it that way is that there are only a few R1 cars, so I might never get times set there. Choosing a class by random was a way of making sure there was a greater than 1:100 chance of setting a time in that class.

Still, the main purpose of the exercise was to prevent me jumping out and picking up my favourite (which would probably sub-consciously lead to me picking something fast). I think it's working so far

[fndrbndr]

Absolutely.  Like I said, this is a statistical nitpick, and not a "real" criticism.  I thnk this could prove interesting.

[Spiny Anteater]

Power Tune/Build added.

[fndrbndr]

Interesting build for power.  How close to that 139 mph did you get on that last straight?

[Ske]

Spiny, I'd strongly recommend going for the Prelude engine swap. Not only does it give you quite a bit more torque, it's also lower in PI.

[Spiny Anteater]

Interesting build for power.  How close to that 139 mph did you get on that last straight?

Sorry, only just noticed that one On the large straight, I would hit 132 before the hill started to sap the speed. Further round the track, there's a long straightish downhill section where D-Class cars usually get up to their top speed. This car was no exception hitting 141 at one stage (and passing the red line in 6th in the process). On the Speedway with a similar top gear I was hitting 137mph.

A few nights ago, Ske sent me across a build for this car with his universal tune on (I'll leave it up to him if he wants to make it public or not). I finally got around to running it tonight. I found that to be better at hotlapping than my tune on the twisty stuff (even with no aero), but I had a slight advantage on the power tracks. I think you could get more speed out of the Prelude engine though by adding something to the engine and taking advantage of the lower PI that away. Ske used grip parts to fill in the PI gap as it were, which is probably why his car had the advantage on the twisty stuff.

While running Ske's car, something struck me. The car was fast, make no doubt about it, but it no longer felt like a Civic. That Prelude engine is a bit of a lazy cruiser,sort of a mini muscle engine. It gets up to the revs, but lacks the eager feel of the Civic. And that was the problem. I had resolved to build up a Civic, but the car no longer felt like one. No doubt I will run Ske's set-up in the future because it is fast (although I lacked the necessary consitency for racing, but that could be because it was new to me), but for the random car Mini-challenges (Blooze - something slightly bigger than a Micro-challenge ) I have set a new personal rule. No engine swaps unless the car cannot hit the top of it's set class without one. Now, I have a horrible feeling I've just jinxed meself to be running a Super-Supra next

Incidentally, I also finished the power tracks tonight. The final power rank for me in this car is 218.449. Nothing spectacular I know, but there were some surprises in there. Not least of which is that around Road America, the best time in the Civic is within a tenth of my best non-drafted time in the Z28 - 2:32.4

[Spiny Anteater]

Well, nearly finished the twisty stuff, so I've put up the Twisty Tune if anybody is interested. If you want something a bit faster and aren't bothered about engine swaps, Ske's tune with the Prelude engine works very well too.

And, more good news. It's going to be close, but I think I might just about be able to catch Blooze in D-Class