S10 Slammed

S10 Slammed

The Chevrolet S10 Slammed is the first good looking car on this blog. The car is the same as thr normal S10, however it was tuned up with specific mannerism. Great flexbody model, big full rims, lowered and stiffened suspension, cambered front wheels, scoop on the hood - it all result in a very good silhouette of the car. It makes an impression that you would want to hop into the car and spend sime time behind the wheel enjoying the slow ride. But this blog is not about going slow ...

What first comes to mind after leaving the parking garage is - "god, this thing is looow". A moment after that another thought appears in my head "jeez, this thing is stiff". What you already should know is the fact, that low and stiff cars dont have a pleasant life in the Rigs of Rods world.

The car has a high-reving engine under the hood which feels powerfull and lends to the overall character of the car. Most other vehicles limits the revs to about 3k, 3.5k. This propeller goes up to 5,2k resulting in high pitch engine sound every time you drop the throttle.

When I first wanted to take a lap with the car ... it was impossible. This car understeers. It is not a simple understeer. This car completely redefines this term! The front wheels does nothing, absolutely nothing, apart from looking good. They have lots of negative camber which reduces the amount of contact points with the surface. To make the matters worse the default steering angle is so much reduced that it is impossible to make a 90 degree turn on a normal intersection. I had to increase the hydros values in .truck file to make the car anywhere near drivable [0.075 to 0.175].

As I said, this car understeers a lot, even with the faster hydros. The steering is completely numb in the middle, which feels like a giant deadzone. The steering wheel has to be turned to the full lock to make the car start cornering. Pushing the throttle helps a lot to overcome the understeer. It makes the front wheels pull the car into the corner like in the real FWD cars. The throttle should not be released mid-corner. When off-throttle, the car starts feeling numb again and most probably hits the first encountered barrier. The car feels always on the edge. The grip level changes rapidly from no-grip to full grip.

I did not mention the fact that the car is very fragile. It is very low and the front bumper seems to be 2cm above the ground which causes a lot of problems with curbs. The car does not have any suspension (or it is so stiff that it does not matter anyway) so when you hit anything all the energy goes into bending the car. One misjudged corner and your "Slammed" starts looking like a banana with a hood coming under the front axle and front wheels spinning with no contact to the ground.

The lack of suspension does not help on the twisty track. There are lots of elevation changes and bumps which are really noticeable from inside the car resulting in lowered comfort of driving. I felt the same when I took a Formula Star Mazda on Lime Rock Park circuit the first time in iRacing - like driving a gokart on cobblestones.

The corners are a real challenge. At the entry to the corner the front wheels have to be turned to full lock which increases the amount of contact points of the front outer tire. Push the throttle to reduce understeer. Keep the throttle long enough to provide enough power to drift out of it. Steering mid-corner is reduced so the main philosophy is to turn-in, push the gas and pray that the car chooses the correct path by itself. Taking into consideration that the car breaks up after a single contact with the barriers, the cornering with this car gives quite a good impression of how it would feel to ride a bicycle on a dense minefield with your eyes shut.

Changes that I made in the .truck file are as follows:

I changed the hydros from 0.075 to 0.175 and increased wheels springs from 200,000 to 400,000. It makes the car lose less speed when drifting through the corner and makes the car react quicker tosteering input. Decreasing the spring ratio did not result in anything good.

My best laptime is 1'39.031. With a lot of troubles all around the track.

The perfect one is 1,5 second faster.

Perfect

1 13.483

2 23.895

3 19.772

4 11.626

5 28.798

Sum 1'37.574

Thanks to Sam Farrelly for some spell-checking.