Priority Upgrades - By Slave Munky

Slave Munky (FM4.ent formus) wrote:

gather around everybody. i'm goin to tell you the story of the priority upgrade table.

back in FM3 i had a theory that engine upgrades had a pattern and each upgrade had a certain characteristic. some took off weight, added weight or the weight didn't change while it added horsepower and torque.

everytime i was building a car to make it go faster, i would save the engine upgrades for last because it seemed like a jigsaw puzzle. adding upgrades taking them off comparing them one to another, then forgetting what the last one said and....

no matter what i put into the car i was always insecure about the build and it's performance and i'm sure most of you did to.

so i came up with an idea in FM3 to grab a few cars and try to sort the upgrades from most desireable to the most useless. some cars didn't have all of the upgrades so i used other cars, trying to connect the dots.

unfortunately it was a mess and i abandoned the project in the calculator graveyard.

learning from what happened i decided to try again with FM4.

i found a car with most of the upgrades. it was the 1993 Ford SVT Mustang Cobra R.

i started with the stock info to compare the changes as i upgraded.

i then used three formulas to measure the increase of power, torque and weight.

upgraded value / stock value = % gain

for example,

333 hp / 235 hp = 141.7% power gain

sorting these out was a milestone but i wanted my build to accelerate as much as possible and be agile around the corners. in other words, i wanted to add as much torque without sacrificing weight as much as possible. so i decided on a rating formula.

in this case it looks like this,

torque gain % / weight gain % = torque rating

if i wanted a general overall performance it would be like this,

(torque gain % + power gain %) / weight gain %

sorted them out from highest to lowest and i had a priority upgrade list. which upgrades to get first than others.

Race Single Turbocharger
Race Twin Turbocharger
Sport Single Turbocharger
Sport Twin Turbocharger
Race Twin-Screw Supercharger
Race Displacement
Race Exhaust
Street Single Turbocharger
Sport Twin-Screw Supercharger
Street Twin Turbocharger
Race Camshaft
Race Fuel System
Race Pistons and Compression
Race Intake Manifold and Throttle Body
Sport Displacement
Race Ignition
Sport Exhaust
Race Valves
Street Twin-Screw Supercharger
Sport Camshaft
Race Air Filter
Race Centrifugal Supercharger
Sport Fuel System
Sport Pistons and Compression
Sport Intake Manifold and Throttle Body
Sport Ignition
Sport Valves
Sport Air Filter
Street Displacement
Sport Centrifugal Supercharger
Race Oil and Cooling


the instructions are quite simple. me personally:

i get the lightest rims first
i get all the adjustable tuning parts
decide on the tire widths
mix and match tire compound and weight reduction upgrades
then the engine upgrades:
the goal for me is to get the PI one point over the class goal. for example, if i wanted an S700 class build, the PI goal would be R3 701. then i'll switch to a heavier rim, selected from the rim list in the calc, to bring it down to 700.

select an upgrade, if it goes over the PI goal or you don't have the upgrade, move on to the next one in line.

i've tested this out with other cars and it seems to be following a pattern. every upgrade i select is ideally better than the next.

another tip: once you have selected a heavier rim and brought it back down to maximum PI for that class, go to drivetrain upgrades > and select the driveline upgrade, select a heavier rim and compare the before an after weight. you might as well lost 3 lbs or 1 lb at least. this way you know for sure you extracted as much weight as possible within that class.

if you can get this right, you can build a class in minutes instead of days without feeling insecure about it.

BiggLou55 wrote:He covered that... He puts on tires, rims and all the adjustable bits first, then moves on to the engine...

Lowflyinmx3 wrote:I've always put rims on first. In my autocross days, reducing unsprung weight was phenomenal for my lap times.