rec.autos.simulators

Pinebox

-Bill
--
Bill Mette      | "A person is smart.  People are dumb."
MCSNet, Chicago |                        - K MiB

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John Simmons - Redneck Techno-Biker (Zerex12)
http://www.members.home.net/jms1/index.html

John Simmons - Barbarian Diecast Collector
http://members.home.net/jsimm/diecast_index.html

IGPS Director
http://members.home.net/jms1/igps.html

If you want to send me email, go to either of the URL's
shown above & click "Send Me Mail" in the contents frame.
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        I think this is really neat.  You have to balance speed versus
reliability, rather than just pick the fastest car.  If you don't.
there must be a way to get in and adjust this.

             bob

It happened to me too at first when I switched from novice damage to
realistic, but hasn't been a problem since.

I've finished many PRO short and long races with the Eagle and only recall
two engine problems, one was because I really abused the engine due to my
gearing selection for 5th being set too low, the other occured at Monaco
in a 28 lap PRO race when someone accidentaly rear-ended me on the 1st lap
and caused the engine damage, it started off minor, with rpm's not maxing etc.
but on the last 5 laps the engine was coughing and sputtering and wouldn't
go above the 9 o'clock position on the tach, still I nursed it succesfully
to finish in 4th place. I drive nothing but the Eagle, and race a good
percentage of the time in PRO realistic damage races.

I think maybe I am easier on the Eagle engine since I've driven no other
GPL car since release (drove Lotus to death in the demo) and never picked
up the bad habit of redlining the engine I see from watching in-car replays
of many Ferrari and Lotus drivers :-)

They key is to not take the RPMs out to the max, I usually shift at
around the 11 o'clock position on the tach, and you *must* let up on
the gas when shifting. Keep an eye on the Oil Temp and Water Temp gauges,
if you see them start creeping up too much then it means you have to back off
and shift early for a while until they come down.

To see the breaking point I setup a training session with realistic damage
and went out for a bit of dyno testing of the engine, abused the engine
and observed the gauges to see where the danger signs were and how to
tell when it was getting too hot up to the point of actual blowup.

I'm really glad Papyrus modeled this difference in reliability of the
different cars, I have had a satisfying moment in a PRO race of being
in 2nd place hounding the 1st place Lotus with no realistic chance of
getting by, but the extra push by the Lotus driver to stay ahead of me
overheated his engine causing a nice blowup and getting a nice view of
Ford pistons flying back from his engine, then cruising by the retiring Lotus
driver waving with a nice smile on my face full of Oil :-)

Those Ferrari's do seem bulletproof though, too bad that engine reliability
comes at the cost of the top end power. The Eagle is a nice tradeoff, you
just have to be gentle.

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

Regards, Bill Tillman
Turn 1 Track & Touring
http://www.teleport.com/~billtill

In helping me decide about which car to use in an off-line series, I did
some research a while back as to the reliability of the various cars
from the actual 1967 season. Here are my results ....

First I looked at the percentage of laps completed.  To calculate this I
added the number of laps each car actually completed to get the
numerator.  The divisor is a little more complicated.  If the car was
still running at the end, I just added the number of laps completed.
Similarly, if the car was in an accident, I just added the number of
laps completed.  If the car had a mechanical DNF, I added the total
number of laps in the race.  There are some minor flaws in this - you
can get a 100% reliability rating if you crash out early; problems that
cause the car to dramatically slow, but still allow the car to finish,
are not reflected, etc.  Here are my findings for this approach:

1) Ferrari 95.7%
2) Brabham 89.7%
3) Honda 80.2%
4) Cooper 68.8%
5) Lotus 68.1%
6) BRM 64.5%
7) Eagle 36.4%

Second, I looked at the percentage of DNFs.  If a car crashed out, I did
not count it at all for the race.  So this calculation is the number of
times the cars was running at the end divided by the number of starts
for the car minus the number of times the car DNF'ed due to an accident
(not a mechanical failure).  

1) Ferrari 85.7%
2) Brabham 81.8%
3) Cooper 58.5%
4) Honda 55.6%
5) BRM 41.9%
6) Lotus 40.9%
7) Eagle 18.8%

No matter how you look at it, Ferrari and Brabham were by far the most
reliable cars and the Eagle was down right pitiful.  As bad as the Lotus
looks in these figures, it was actually even worse because a few times
Clark was leading only to have a non-fatal malfunction that cost him the
lead, but didn't cause a complete DNF.

I hope someone finds this interesting and/or useful.

Dave Ewing

Thanks.

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

I race in Edwin Solheim's IGPLC online league F2 division, we are
3 races into the season, each PRO damage race so far lasting about
45 minutes actual race time (not including practice), and I have not
seen any engine blowups in our F2 races so far (Spa this weekend
may be the first engine killer), although I think the folks in the
F1 and F3 divisions had a few Lotus and Eagle blowups in the first
race at Kyalami.

This thread actually reminds me to go and do some testing of the
5th gear in my Eagle setup at Spa, I ran a few 9 lap PRO races there
with no engine problems but this weekend's race will be PRO 13 laps, I
better make sure that my Eagle engine can stand being topped out
in my current settings for 5th gear for 13 laps before race day...
I've got to schedule some track time right away.

If you want to look at some race results data for the different cars
in our online races so far check:
http://home.sol.no/~kareknut/resultsf1.htm

A nice assortment of drivers with different car makes, and especially notable
is Jason Crossley who leads the F3 point standings in his BRM nice to see it
can win reliably.

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

SNIP!>

Dave Ewing

Do you happen to have the URL for the Historic league site?
It is pretty interesting to look up these league results and see
how people you've raced with on VROC and Pro Racing Club do in
the online leagues.

I'll let you know as the season progresses how the Eagle works for
me, in the F2 division we are also running with PRO Long realistic damage
but with adjusted settings in 67season.ini to make the Long races longer,
for example this weekend's Spa will be 13 laps compared to the normal 9
laps for the default PRO Long settings, usually the settings work out
to a 45 minute race from green flag to checker flag.

So far so good on the Eagle reliability 3 races down 8 to go, hope to keep
the good luck going, and compile some more data on it's reliability compared
to Ferrari and Lotus which we have an decent number of in each race.

Seeyas on the track.

--John (Joao) Silva

There's also a lot of interesting stuff about historic f1 in addition to
the GPL league. I just completed my first race (Kyalami).  I ended up a
lap down, with one minor off.  I was racing against the unedited AI.  I
might have to turn down the AI using the official HMRC sanctioned AI
tweaks for the race at Monaco.

There were a lot of mechanical DNF's with the non-AI Ferrari's, it
seems, which is kind of surprising.

Note: the league is full, so please don't bombard Bruce with requests to
join.

Dave Ewing