Maluch JBeam rebuild

It's not like it was hard though, I just did some trickery with node groups. Normally in normal cars you don't have to do this kind of stuff but I was forced to do it by the bad model (floor doesn't really 100% fit the upper chassis). Generally a lot of stuff in this model is mismatched or not precisely fitted, as far as I can tell the original wasn't made for BeamNG at first but was just reused for it. And mismatched verticles, degenerate triangles, too long edges, as well as too many faces in general is mostly what causes the spiking and other weird behavior in the model when it crashes.

 

So I got bored of making the triangles and all, and I decided to try the front suspension instead.

This car has a really unique front suspension design which has never been represented in the game before as far as I know. It's independent suspension except instead of normal springs it has one long widthwise reversed leaf spring connecting both sides and the chassis. Who designed this and why? I have no idea. The closest we have to this in terms of mods is the CrashHard Classic but that one is way older, bigger, heavier and has a solid axle instead of IFS (also it's way more laggy lol). The original Maluch mod didn't even try to simulate this, instead it had massive long invisible standard springs on the sides, which was completely unrealistic. I decided to try doing it the proper way but it's my first time ever making suspension and I'm already starting from something as hard as this so it definitely isn't the best. Fortunately it's definitely fixable, it's just the matter of readjusting the values of the leaf spring, which someone else will have to do as I have zero experience with it. The good news is that it does behave like a leaf spring would (roughly, someone will have to somehow make it stretch less too), I based the mechanism on the Pigeon rear leaf springs, it's just the matter of adjusting it to this car, currently it uses Autobello spring and damp values and it somehow works (but probably not very well, idk, it has no wheels yet).

 

More parts, shocks taken from the Piccolina and heavily modified Covet steering rods. It does actually steer obviously.

Edit: Since the new suspension is fully compatible with universal wheels, I added them, but even the smallest ones with smallest tires barely fit... So idk what's the point of it lol

 

It was already possible to put monster wheels on old version. I was thinking that instead of fixing the old offroad suspension I could put it on a cut Hopper frame like the real life offroad version the mod one is based on is on a cut Suzuki Samurai frame.

 

Working on the suspension is hard... No new pics because it looks the same but behaves way better now, it actually absorbs impact. What I still need to fix is the wheels wobbling a little bit back and forth due to the fact that this suspension doesn't have any lower arms to prevent this. I might need to make the upper arms stiffer instead, which I assume they did in real life.
Edit: Fixed, improved leaf spring, and used Autobello shock values instead of my own ones because they work better overall. Still someone will definitely have to finetune what I did.
Edit 2: I just noticed how wrong all the engine torque curve and transmission/diff gear ratio values are in the original mod.. It's way too fast, I'll have to fix this lol

 

Not the same design, it's way different. The LeGran and Wendover have lower mounts and upper parts of the hubs are connected to the struts (a more common thing) while the Maluch only has upper ones connected to the chassis and springs while the lower parts of hubs are held by the leaf spring only, they aren't connected to anything else at all aside from just tie rods. Also the LeGran spring is straight while the one on the Maluch is about as curved as truck springs, but facing the other way. I didn't know that the LeGran and Wendover used that, but still it isn't helping in my case.
Added brakes, I tried to get the values realistically, both the small brakes used on 600cc version and lower trims of ST 650 and the slightly bigger ones used on all other ones. They are about half the size of Piccolina brakes lol

 

Rear suspension was way, WAY easier than front, it's just multilink suspension without upper mounts, I used Autobello shocks (again) and Miramar springs except I changed everything in them as they are way shorter here and the car is way lighter, for the brakes I used the same as the front ones except I added parking brake.

Also I just fixed front suspension wobble, it was just because I forgot to copy the damp helpers from Autobello

 

More like too big, the car has 12x4 from factory... The in-game 13x5 barely fit
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Actually nevermind, the model scale must be off based on the wheels, they look like 13x3. Also the lug pattern is completely wrong.

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If the whole model is as much off as the wheels, then it would be this much off. A pretty big difference. Someone has to check this.

I checked the wheels in Blender, the Maluch wheels are inaccurate as heck, they are 14.9x6.4, someone will have to fix them but they will look small on the car then so the car has to be rescaled too

 

If the pattern is correct, then it shouldn't be compatible with other 4-lug wheels technically... And also, the Fiat 500 really looks similar to the Maluch with these wheels, cool. Should I make separate Fiat 4-lug hubs for these wheels, which would only allow the smaller brakes (there is no way the bigger ones can fit there and they were only available on higher trim models that had the FL wheels early anyway)? And what to do with the model? Will someone rescale it? If yes then please do it quickly before I haven't made much progress because I might have to redo quite a lot if this is the case.

 

That's the difficult part... A lot would have to be changed. The length from the front to rear bumper from 3130mm to 3054mm, width from 1640mm to 1377mm, height from 1440mm to 1335mm, wheelbase from 2000-something to 1840mm, front track width from 1340mm to 1142mm, rear track width from 1340mm to 1203mm, wheels from whatever they are to 12x4 and tires to match them to 135R12... A lot to change.