Maluch JBeam rebuild

They are the same hubs so it won't happen, they are named differently because of different lug pattern so normal wheels would have some clipping on them, I can test Piccolina with Maluch wheels though.

 

That's weird. I haven't tried changing camber and toe with vanilla wheels, maybe it's an issue with my wheels then? And the springs could be too stiff, idk, the rear of the car theoretically should be lighter because the engine is a lot lighter, but I need to double check, and I can try adjusting the mounting points, it will require messing a lot with the scale and position of suspension components but I can do it maybe.

 

So I found a manual for the 650E and found out about some interesting things:

• 650E wasn't even the richest trim, there were also 650ES and 650EK after it. The regular 650E was based on 650S, 650ES on 650L and 650EK on 650K. No idea why they skipped a trim, but if they didn't, there would be 2 different versions called EL that are decades apart so that's good lol. They all had their own letterings too, I found images of that so it's real, but these trims must have been really rare because I didn't find any images of the full car, just the badges alone. The manual lists all the differences between the trims, so that's cool, will be easier to make the configs. It also confirmed the interior colors.
• There were also versions called 650I, 650EI1 and 650EI2. They were trims dedicated to people on wheelchairs, probably not worth to include them in the mod.
• The term "glued windshield" doesn't mean that it's glued to the car as it turns out... it was a technical synonym for "layered windshield", which is the standard windshield design. Which means that most trims had windshields made of normal, non-reinforced glass that can break fully, and only the richest ones had the normal safe ones. Explains how the crash test dummy could break a hole in it with its head. Not very safe.
• 650E didn't have P4 type bumpers available, they were reserved for export only from then on. They were put on Polish-built Italian-spec trim Personal 4P. The most you could get in Poland were bumper guards on 650EK, which btw they also came with side bumper cover things. Quite a downgrade from before the E trim. The export version also had a sunroof.
• There was a weird version called, and that's the official technical name, "Standard version of the Polski Fiat 126p in which part of the equipment comes from the export Personal 4P or the 650K versions". What the heck. I assume it's the same situation as with the transitionary model, where they had a lot of spare parts and had to put them somewhere so they made a new trim for that. They had a sunroof, Italian interior colors, only 1 side mirror, Italian side trim, tilting windows, heated backligh, Italian spec tires, and in terms of engines they "could" have whatever that had been available before, so 600cc or 650cc with various carburetors, and pretty sure you couldn't choose which engine you would get. Anyway that's too many custom parts to make to include this in the mod (the sunroof especially).
• Apparently the 650E had a completely different front hood that looked the same from the outside but wasn't compatible with the old version at all, that's weird. Same thing with many parts of the doors, there were like 5 pages dedicated to what they changed with the doors in the E trim.

 

That's what I meant when I said I think it's a geometry issue. I'll try to fix that based on blueprints, if I don't manage to then I'll send the body Jbeam here too. I obviously moved the points to where they currently are on the model, but back then I didn't know how wrong the model is.

 

Ok so I improved the suspension a lot. Doesn't need a new scratch made design, but I need a beta tester probably since the new behavior is way different and needs finetuning.
It really was a geometry problem. 2 problems actually. With the spring stiffness, it was my fault for misalligning the bottom spring nodes yesterday by accident, it caused them to behave as if they were longer than they really are, so they needed to be stiffer to hold the weight. Fixed that and I could make them softer. With the dampers, limiters and bump stops not working, it turned out to be an issue with the arms being way too short. I extended them (Jbeam-wise, no change to the models) based on reference images and somehow it fixed all the issues. Don't ask me how it's related, no idea, but it worked. Look how much longer they should really be, not to metion the shape is wrong too:

With the front suspension lifting up on crashes at 50 km/h and above, turned out it had nothing to do with the actual suspension. (Except the leaf spring was also too stiff so it might have worsened that, I made it stiff so the car stays level with the rear springs that were too stiff as well. That is also fixed.) Just for some reason the beams connecting the arm mounts had wrong deformation values. I assumed it was the leaf spring deforming, but it was an unrelated issue: physically it wasn't deforming, but it looked like it, because I had some leftovers of the old failed design in the body Jbeam that were messing up the node group of the leaf spring. It is fixed now, 55 km/h crash result:

The suspension seems to be doing its job well on the Gridmap testing area (on the tests that aren't too tall for it), but I still need someone to beta test and finetune it. It's definitely way more comfortable than in the old version of the mod. Also toe and camber still don't work very well, it's not a wheels issue because doesn't work for vanilla wheels either, someone has to take a look at that. I'll add race and rally suspension parts once the normal ones prove to be working well.
Also added that breakable windshield and it's the default now.

 

Working on the suspension with the help of SKB and Xupaun, they found many other bugs too which I fixed. There was some stuff wrong with the clutch, engine inertia, steering angle, overall drag coef, and a conflict with some old mod, as well as some typos. This is why I needed some feedback. Meanwhile I added more stuff too, just now I added side bumper covers that came with the 650L and 650EK trims along with bumper guards.

Earlier I converted the wheel materials to PBR, they look better now:

Also added a new bumper color that was apparently available on the Town version optionally. Not sure why anyone would pay more for grey bumpers but ok.

Seems to be the one my uncle had except his is worn out and almost white at this point. Previously I thought it used to be black but turns out it was grey from factory.

--- Post updated ---
Queston for people who know a lot about this car: What the heck is the 650N version? This is the first case where Google shows absolutely no results when I searched, but it must exist since I found many pictures of the 650N badge alone, as well as pictures of a custom stanced build with this badge:


When I searched on YouTube I only found some tuning videos + some dude who somehow got the Abarth prototype and dismounted the entire exhaust system to show it with detail (which is also helpful to me but it's not at all what I'm looking for).

 

Probably not because it's a Polish badge so it would have to be a Polish word, and also the whole badge was new when the engine got introduced, back when 600cc was the only engine it didn't have the badge at all and it only got added when 650cc became a thing to differentiate them.

 

That could be it, any more info about the German engine? This is interesting