Hawkeye Nosedive!

And just when you thought your insurance company was looking after your stacked STi. No wonder Scooby premiums are so high! At least this might bump your claim up.

10,000 visits!! Thanks and Season's Greetings everyone!

Firstly I'd like to wish a big Merry Christmas, or whatever non denominational festive greeting, to all ScoobyLab visitors and Subaru enthusiasts across the globe!

It's not been a very productive year in the Lab, having spent most of it with no Scooby and a host of new projects mean it doesn't look like I'll be budgeting for another one this year either, but I have been helping out with some mate's Imprezas and the trickle of stuff onto the blog has still been and will continue to be an ongoing process, persevering to keep classic Scoobys alive and well!

Despite the slowing of new information, the blog has gone from strength to strength through 2011 and this week has just rolled over to 10,000 visits!

Thankyou to all those who surfed over to ScoobyLab.co.cc this year! We hope the blog has helped keep some of the world's Imprezas on the road, given insight into running and restoring these awesome affordable super-cars or just entertained some Scooby fans and will continue to do so into its third yeard year!

Merry festivities and a happy new year 2012 to all!!

GT5: Cars Thread

Cars from old GTs they should port forward:

Gran Turismo:

Nissan R33 Skyline LM

Mitsubishi GTO LM

Gran Turismo 2:

Suzuki Cultus Pikes Peak

Nissan TOMICA Skyline R30 Silhouette Foumula

SALEEN Mustang Wide Body

Audi A4 BTCC Touring Car

Nissan HKS 180SX Drager

Nissan HKS R33 Drager

GT5: Tyres Thread

This thread is just a bunch of musings and observations about tyres, mainly in endurance races.

What do rain tyres actually do??

I went out first with R : Hard tyres for the 1000km of Sukuba, which poured down for the whole 6 hours, so I quickly came back to the pits and threw on Racing : Rain. Handling wasn't much improved, the car still broke away easily on corners front and back, I was using the 4WD Skyline R33 Touring Car, and I couldn't catch the front runners. I quickly came in and pitted again, this time trying out the Racing : Intermediate tyres I've not used for a long time, or at all in GT5. These totally transformed the car. It wasn't slightly wet, it was really wet, but still the Intermediates lasted longer and handled ten times better than Rains. So what are rain tyres actually for?

I'll be trying out Rain and Inters during my 24 Hrs. Le Mans, also raining cats and dogs.

Do all Racing tyres have same wear rate??

Do hard / med / soft Racing tyres have the same wear rate?? They never used to. In GT3/4 - "SuperSoft" or Racing : Soft we're clearly grippier than Racing : Hard tyres, but lasted nowhere near as long and Medium was a noticeable compromise between them. Choose between faster lap times or less pit stops. In GT5 it doesn't seem so clear cut, as R : Soft tyres don't seem to hold the road that much better than Hards, but do increase lap times a bit, whereas the difference in wear-rate between them is barely noticeable at all. This kind of negates the point of R : Hard tyres. R : Soft do still make lap times a few seconds quicker, so why even use the less grippy Hard if they have no wear advantage?!

In the case of my 9 Hrs. of Tsukuba endurance race, running a 4WD Amuse Carbon R '04, I have even found that R : Soft tyres were outlasting R : Hard! I first ran R:Hard and found they wouldn't even last 10 laps. After my third pit I ran fast to make up time and managed to destroy the R:Hard tyres in 5 laps! Assuming that all Racing tyres had been nerfed for this race [although I don't see why as the opponent cars are all running R:hard go figure], I switched over to Sports : Soft to see if they lasted longer, which would make sense if PD were to force a handicap on Racing tyres in the advanced races and encourage the use of realistic tyres [I still don't agree that R:Hard aren't like realistic slick tyres]. Sports Soft lasted nearly 20 laps though, but I lost pace so after a couple more stops I threw on a set of Racing Soft to catch up and was flabbergasted when they lasted about 20 laps too. Back to R:Hard and they were burned in 10 laps. How can this be? I assumed it to be all in my mind, went back and checked again with the same result. Maybe because of the heat of the track, or because the surface is greasy the harder compound tyres lose grip more and spin their tread away in corners, but I don't really see the real world physics of this. Seems to me that they're confused with the tyre setups in GT5. Has their quest for realism in the updates introduced more continuity errors or is it simply a glitch on this Tsukuba? I'd love to know if this has always been the case before the updates. It's certainly never happened in previous GTs.

Do Sports tyres last longer than racing ones during endurance races? It would certainly seem the case in some. Are Racing tyres, which most people describe as having an unrealistically high rate of wear in GT5, designed like this to give a handicap against the less grippy tyres? I suppose this would be the case in real life where slicker and softer tyres are designed to sacrifice their rubber to the road to aid grip, but the expensive compounds used and higher op-temperatures might still allow them to last longer being thrashed round a track as they are than semi-racing "sports" road tyres, which might start to fail much quicker from this sort of treatment.

GT5 : Endurance Race Thread

This thread contains a load of warble about my Endurance races:

Why do some Endurance Races have pit-crews and some don't? How come suspending the race and coming back in fixes any aerodynamic or mechanical defects with the car? It wouldn't be hard to save the damage status and seems a bit of a needless loss of realism.

Finally finished my cash/cars grinding mission so I'm moving onto finishing the Endurance Race series. Before the save capability I'd only done the first one.

200 Miles of Laguna Seca

Wedsport Lexus IS300 Race Car

Daytona 500

Sauber Mercedes

Suzuka 1000km

Skyline R32 Touring Car

4 Hrs. of Nurburgring

Audi A4 Touring Car

9 Hrs. of Tsukuba

Amuse Carbon R '04

There are a lot of fast cars here and the damage physics is getting higher. My first attempts were with the new RX-7 Touring Car and after an hour I was losing to a tuned Honda S2000 both times, probably the Amuse GT1 Turbo, but it seems even more imbalanced than usual. I took the lead quickly, but after a while the S2000 was forever on my tail. After my first pit-stop, with minimum fuel, it had shot ahead and although my time was gaining slightly, I just couldn't close any gap before my second pit. I soldiered on hoping that the Honda would make a long pit and I could catch up, but he was still a lap ahead as my tyres hit half tread so I threw in the towel.

For my final attempt I've used the Amuse Carbon R Skyline, with the big turbo, and yes it's imbalanced. The Honda is now nowhere to be seen, but I am being given similar grief by the HPA Motorsport R32 Golf, which I know not to be particularly fast but never comes in for tyres. He finally did after 65 laps, as I was already beginning to think about my third stop, but before pulling in I was over a lap ahead, meaning I took only 30 litres of fuel and got back on the track still 27 secs. ahead. A couple of pit-stops further on and I am now permanently a lap ahead, 2 hours in. Ok so it hasn't made for a pretty race, but this is not one I intend to sit through again and I don't want to lose.