Maluch JBeam rebuild

It's already almost a double wishbone at this point, with the difference being that the lower wishbone doubles as the leaf spring and it had to get some extra stabilization points due to that. I might have to simplify the design but overall it will stay, I want it to be also simulated properly in terms of damage, double wishbone breaks way different than this. I could swap a Pigeon one as a test though. As for the rear I can try the Autobello one and see if it's better than current one, but really the only thing to do in the rear is finetuning the springs and shocks.

 

I'm not going to simulate the leaf being torn off, I just mean that with the leaf spring, the damage to the left side somewhat affects the right side too, and with an independent double wishbone it can't happen. Like the leaf spring could get misalligned and move one wheel forward and the other backward, or get shifted to the left or right which would mess up the geometry. (Of course this only happens under heavy chassis damage that changes the relative position of the leaf spring mounts)
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Added these and there don't seem to be any issues with the chassis holding the weight, I'll make my own loads now. At 380kg front and 670 rear the suspension is still holding on, I might need to weaken it.

EDIT: there WAS no issue until I started turning, well.. This suspension is definitely not supposed to do this

 

Added more stuff, next I'll model my own loads. I think I'll add the offroad suspension back too if the normal one turns out well, it will be for amateur offroad builds while for the proper offroad version I'll use the Hopper frame and suspension.

 

That's the BIS version, a hatchback, more capable of transporting heavy stuff inside (and on top). It has 2 cargo spaces, one under the hood like the normal one, and the other on top of the engine bay. It also has larger wheels, and like 800 other changes. The improved ability of transporting things inside and on top was made at the cost of towing abilities, it could no longer tow a trailer. You could load up to 345kg of stuff, rather than 320 like in the normal version, but the base weight of the car increased to 645kg. They made a 700cc engine for it that made 1 more horsepower and provided better acceleration, but would overheat a lot, even despite the fact that it was watercooled instead of aircooled. The BIS model was originally supposed to replace the normal one but people didn't like it because of multiple reasons: it was way more expensive (had many useless "improvements" like the rear wiper for no reason), broke down more often, was less reliable, harder to repair because you couldn't just normally access the engine like on the normal version (and like you should be able to on any normal car), it was way harder to find replacement parts because the normal version was just everywhere and this wasn't (most of the important parts from normal version weren't compatible with it), and it would also rust really fast but back then nobody could tell that. So generally it was discontinued and instead the EL version was made later.

As of progress, I added some things:
Loads for the road assistance config that barely fit under the hood: a large fire extinguisher and 3 rather small traffic cones. They won't fall off, there is no point of making full Jbeam for something this small, they just add weight and extra beams to simulate the fact that something is inside.

Added the ability to select offroad tire on spare wheel:

And also offroad loads for roof rack:

Next I'm modelling suitcases and stuff for the roof.

 

The engine had to be reowrked to save space in the rear, the radiator/cooler can be put on the side unlike the cooling pipes. (It still had the side air intakes but they were probably fake lol.) But it was dumb to stuff both the engine and the radiator in a small space on the bottom rear, it made access to the engine way more difficult for car mechanics.
There were many more interesting rejected prototypes, mostly Polish. The only Italian one I know of was the Cavaletta, an SUV prototype:

And also the Fiat 179 ESV if it even counts at the same car, so weird:

It was a prototype designed to maximize the safety, hence the really uncommon design of the front and rear ends.
This Czech website lists many more Italian prototypes, but idk if I trust it since I can't find anything about them anywhere else and the website is wrong about a lot of stuff of the more known models (it mistook the Polish special edition as the Italian Personal 4P model):
http://www.revoracing.cz/cs/encyklopedie/fiat-126
There were much more Polish prototypes than Italian. For example the Bombel, which was supposed to be a "pickup" but looks nothing like one:



Another example was the Long, which was, well, a longer version, not sure what was the purpose of that:

The chassis of this longer wheelbase prototype was what the Kombi (wagon prototype) was based on:

The Kombi prototypes actually recieved the P-4 bumpers before the normal version. Not many people know that there was also a van prototype based on it:

There was a front engine FWD prototype called the 650NP. It had front disc brakes and massive bumpers:

Then there's the weird prototypes that don't even look like the original anymore...



The first one of these was actually amphibious, it was used in several Polish movies "starring" as amohibious cars, then it was made into a military transporter:

There was also a Diesel prototype, but I don't think there are any pictures of it. Generally there were a lot and these are probably not even all of them lol.

 

I didn't know about the flat aircooled engine, I have no idea why they didn't use it then. Maybe they had no permission from Fiat, remember that in Poland it was practically produced by FSM up until the 90s. (Up until then, the FL version didn't have the characteristic bigger air intakes, black roof rails/waterdrains, convertible version, any aftermarket tuning options...)
The FWD version obviously had a different front suspension, McPherson struts I believe. Rear suspension was also a bit different, due to bigger base weight and longer overhang. Can't find any pictures of what changed there.

I tried modelling a suitcase... If someone else did it, it would look better, now it's about as good quality as the underside textures of the car, so not really that good. I'll keep it unless someone makes a better one. I need like 2 more different models for variety.


Also I found this picture... Overloading the car with a ridiculous amount of stuff was real lol.

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Modelled a different suitcase and also added a recolored version of the previous one. I need to make Jbeam for this now, in various configurations: single, dual and triple suitcase on roof (different sizes for variety), straps, and a small suitcase for front cargo area.

 

Jbeamed a single suitcase, now it shouldn't be too hard to adapt this Jbeam to all the rest


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Various weight variants of suitcase loads: 20, 35, 50 and 60 kg. 30 is already the maximum safe load for this roof rack, I can tell why - it gets a bit unstable above that...


EDIT: Also barely fitting suitcase in the front, replaces the spare tire

 

PLEASE HELP, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO ANYMORE WITH THE SUSPENSION.
I have replaced my rear suspension which was a mashup of other vehicle suspensions with Autobello one... Nothing changed at all except the bump stops and limiters didn't want to work anymore for whatever reason. Added the old ones back and I don't see any difference compared to the old one. Still behaves exactly the same, despite having drastically different values pretty much everywhere. Toe and camber settings still do almost nothing and I have no idea why, they are more of a vague suggestion than setting, the change is way more visible on the Autobello. Tried both Autobello and Miramar springs (torsionbar based vs beam based), Autobello ones only make it worse, it gets stuck more, back to old ones then. Shocks are the weirdest, removing them changes almost nothing, the suspension is extremely wobbly in both cases. Increasing the shock damp values even 1000 times doesn't help. Could be a geometry issue? If so, then what should the geometry be, the whole model is inaccurate to real life, someone would have to remodel it based on blueprints if this is the case.
"Just do it the same as in vanilla cars"? Tried the exact same values as in the Autobello, still nothing. Tried the exact identical setup as on the Autobello with zero changes except moving the suspension to the proper place, the wheels explode, it's not a problem with my wheels because all vanilla ones explode too. It's not a clipping issue, tried disabling collision. It's not a weight issue, I have made the rear suspension heavier based on the Autobello one at the cost of reducing the rear fenders weight back to the old value, they still explode. Not an offset issue either, tried various offsets, including the exact same as on the Autobello which made the track much wider, they still explode. I have absolutely no idea what is going on here and I'm afraid to even touch the front suspension because it will definitely break the whole thing. I fear that both suspensions have to be redone completely from scratch, not based on official vehicles because that doesn't want to work and I have no idea why.

 

I just found out that the 90s FL version (the one produced by Fiat) was officially known as FL Maquillage, which is French for Makeup. What the heck.
Also it didn't have a black interior color option. Speaking of which, I found some nerd who knows all the interior colors of this car, including all versions, including export and import of all countries, etc. So I added the interior color options from Polish versions to the mod (seats have a separate color slot):

• Black (generic one available in ST and FL, was in the mod by default)
  
• Black and beige-ish (ST)
  
• Black and orannge-ish (ST)
  
• Black and green (ST)
  
• Beige-ish (650L/650K by TAN)
  
• Orange-ish (650L/650K)
  
• Green (650L/650K)
  
• Orange with beige seats (650K)
  
• Black with beige seats (650K)
  
• Grey with light grey seats and black dash (FL, EL, ELX)
  
  
• Beige with black dash (FL)
  
• Blue (FL Maquillage & EL, replaced black option)
  
• Grey with dark grey seats (EL)
  
• Bluish grey (ELX)
  

Also added headrests as option for seats instead of having separate seats with headrests:

And last thing, I found a manual for the car from Panek Car Sharing website, and added it as an option to add on the back seats. It's a really complex process to start the car according to the manual lol.


I still need someone to help with the suspension, I hoped to get it done today but I can't so I did all of this instead.

 

I did a bit of crash testing. Turns out I didn't have to change much to get pretty much the same result as in the images and video.

On a 40 km/h head on crash into the wall, the front wheel arches get slightly shorter than the wheel diameter. The rest of the structure suffers a tiny bit of deformation, but not enough to break any of the glass. The hood bent the same way. Even the dummy hit the glass with its head because the seatbelts suck lol.
There was honestly not much to change to achieve this result. I only had to make the B pillar a bit stronger and C pillar a lot stronger (understandable since the latter is way thicker than on the Piccolina and the car is newer so both could be stronger), make the sides of the hood deform easier so it doesn't get stuck in the body, and nerf the seatbelts a lot. Thankfully I didn't have to change anything that affects the suspension.
If the runup on Gridmap is the standard length runup for crash testing, then the car really can't reach 50 km/h in this distance, only 49. This explains why the crash tests were done at 40. The first one looked a bit more devastating so I assume it was done at 50 km/h. My result at 49 is closer to that, the windshield falls off and the fenders bend more, the only thing that behaves different in it is the suspension... The leaf spring got all bent and messed up which lifted the front up... I won't attempt to fix that myself, I need a new suspension.

 

For anyone who is curious, here are the results of the other crash tests on Gridmap at 40 km/h:

Compared to the old version of the mod (don't mind some messed up textures, the 2 versions aren't really compatible):

It really didn't do that bad, on low speed crashes it performs ok. The problem is at high speed ones, and in my version it's mostly fixed.

On VERY high speed crashes, you can really see a difference lol. 200+ km/h, old doors didn't deform at all, the rest turned into a spiky mess.

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Here, but idk how much you can figure out from this without the rest of the car.