The Nova - Piston Powered

FULLY VANILLA - Top Speed Peak: 227km/h, ~210-220km/h AVG

Combined Peak Torque: ~6000Nm Combined Peak Power: ~640hp

Bringing to you one of my most ambitious piston powered projects ever, I present "The Nova", a fully piston powered luxury performance car. It offers a lot of my newest technologies primarily with automatic timing & throttle management to make it easy to drive, while also offering higher speeds and better handling from my 4 engined AWD direct drive performance drivetrain.

Controls:

W/S - Forward/Reverse 1 - Parking Brake 2 - Top Speed Mode 3 - Offroad Mode 4 - Lights 5 - Hazard Lights 6 - Radio 7 - Horn

Parking Brake:

It will normally be managed fully automatically by the vehicle, disengaging as you press W or S and engaging as you leave the seat. It can also be manually controlled with a button and the interior & exterior light red lights indicate if its on or off.

DISCLAIMER: This car uses logic gates attached to the seat to detect you and for some stupid reason SM removes those, if you reload the world with the vehicle in it. This is why you get the manual button and the indicators in the first place.

Launch Control:

To get faster launches without having to wait for the timing to go through reverse, you can hold the parking brake button down until the lights flash, hold W down and then let go off the parking brake button.

Top Speed Mode:

As engine timing gets heavily compromised above ~724rpm, making engines go up to ~1.2k rpm can be a challenge for reliability and in the same sense handling and drivability. Thats why this is a special mode, only really intended for top speed runs on flat terrain. Use it under your own risk. The top speed outside of this mode will be limited to ~150-160kph close to gas engine speed where these engine make their peak power.

Offroad Mode:

This mode raises the cars ride height by 1 block and keeps it in first for reliable offroading. Cant be engaged while going at normal top speed, neither in top speed mode.

Technology Overview:

Its core piece of tech, aside of its drivetrain, is its automatic 3 speed timing system with reverse, managing timing not just depending on throttle input, but also load and fps to prevent engine stalling. It has this for each of its 4 engines, which are in fact independently controlled. It offers torque vectoring in cornering using its internal engine clutches and timing to improve handling, while also using the same clutches for easy throttling.

When it comes to its engines, they use my unique layout, offering variable timing and a variable stroke just like in the past, but now also using variable stroke throttling as mentioned before and 0wb technology to increase engine efficiency and reduce its size. Fully independent suspension, AWD with 16 pistons and AWS still come as standard, while still keeping complexity relatively low, even below what you may expect of some 2WD piston cars you will find on the workshop.

It also comes with height adjustable suspension, to make it more versatile on terrain and fully working lighting, including brake & reversing lights. This system is somewhat compromised with performance though, due to the suspension geometry.

More about the engines:

To all of you, to which this engine design may be new, it offers some of the highest power & lag efficiency compared to most designs in the community. This is primarily due to passive piston stretch and more efficient geometry. Its different way of converting linear to rotational motion requires far less bearings and bodies and since they only need 1 crankpin in either case, adding a tech piece called a variable stroke to it is quite easy and gives huge performance benefits, primarily in speed and power. Together with variable timing and 0wb tech, this is one of the most power efficient piston engines I know of (~40hp/piston), which should feel very sufficient with 16 pistons. Due to their peak power being made relatively high in their rev range (724rpm), using it where such speeds can be pushed is adviced.

The AWD setup could also technically be considered IWD, which is a drivetrain that drives each wheel with its own engine in a direct drive fashion and thats primarily used in higher performance electric vehicles in real life currently. This drivetrain can offer huge benefits with primarily keeping drivetrain losses at a minimum and offering a lot more flexibility with vehicle control while cornering (torque vectoring). This vehicle uses internal engine clutches to put the variable stroke to 0, which effectively turns an engine into a free bearing and can reduce engine speed on either side of the car under cornering.

Due to the aggressive suspension glitch effect that my engines have, a torque counteracting suspension glitch is needed to retain any decent power to weight efficiency, especially to keep this car free of any auxiliary engines (which was one of the goals I had with it). To keep lag low and to maintain it as level as possible under most driving situation, it has been made variable and automatic with ground level sensoring.

Updates:

The suspension glitch system has been changed from ground based detection to engine speed detection, which should be far more accurate under most driving scenarios and have less understeer. Added a new logic feature to actually account for engine reversing at high speed (-1000rpm+), making the previous and compromised restart system on the body obsolete. The handbrake can also be disengaged manually, if you so wish. The suspension raiser has been integrated into a proper offroad mode and launch control has also been added, that bypasses the initial launch delay by setting timing to first without closing the clutches. The shifting logic has also been revised, mainly with actual upshifting logic for third and seat detection logic has also been added to fully automate the parking brake. It has also received revised torque vectoring with timing for second and revised tuning for handling. Pretty much all of the clutch collisions have been removed aswell, by redesigning the A/D detector piece to give more clearance.

All the torque- and power numbers have been measured with a dyno, here is a link of mine and Ben's: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2959348546 Modpack dyno: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2788870097

Tags: sports car, estate, station wagon, all wheel drive, individual wheel drive, kein engine, piston engine