As I was going through the upgrades on mt new Mach 1 I was completely confused by the numbers when I upgraded the carb assembly to the “race” carb. Now I don’t know about the kids at PGG but I spent many years upgrading real car engines. The old Mustang Mach 1 came from the factory with a fairly heavy cast iron manifold on the Cleveland V8 with an Autolight 4bbl carb. This car is designed “351”. If you upgrade to the “race” carb, you gain 13 lbs of weight and only 10 hp. Honestly, I don’t think there is a “race” qualified carb and manifold anywhere in the world that would add weight in replacement of the stock manifold and carb. I know from personal experience that even a dual carb aluminum manifold with two Holly “race ready” carbs, is lighter than the stock manifold and carb. And that combination definitely add more than 10 horsepower to a 351C Ford motor.
The upgrade algorithms in this game are screwed up. They need to get professional help from the race engineers at places like Roush, or Penske, or John Force racing to help them with the upgrade algorithms.
Or at least get somebody who knows cars well enough to know when you put a race carb or race suspension on a car the “handling” index should not go down!
you are adding an additional carb so there is that weight and “maybe” they are thinking that in 1971 the manifold was still cast iron when you optioned the factory dual carb setup.
doesn’t the race upgrade image show it as a high-rise manifold? even with it being aluminum it might still weigh more than the single carb cast iron.
I think its important to keep in mind that this game has historically been on the lighter side of simulation, and if you start looking at some of the upgrades under a microscope they don’t always make sense, and this is an example of that.
I’m not disagreeing with your logic or hp/torque/weight for the mod options but the manifold is a separate upgrade. If you add both the overall weight drops 4lb and hp increases by 19. It’s more in line with your expectations but I can still see how a bigger improvement could be expected for race parts. If they just add an option for open headers…
WhiteBurrito42. I went back to the numbers and see what you’re talking about. Overall from the manifold and the carb, both race, the weight drops 17 lbs and the horsepower is up 28. The handling spec goes red and the PI goes up 4 to C550 with the manifold. Guessing this is some screw point in the game logic since the car would have to still have the original single 4bbl carb (algorithm or logic) mixed with the dual quad race manifold (algorithm or logic). So there must be some kind of generalized logic to kind of fumble the way through these mismatched setups.
It would make more sense if there were checks in the car setups that said, “race manifold requires race carburetor”, please select those then continue.
As an old motor head, it just doesn’t seem like the game developers really have a heart and head for cars.
Another area that really gives me a chuckle is the ignition upgrade.
Street looks like spark plugs. Sport looks like plugs and wires. Race looks like… 
a screwdriver? Yeah, um, here Roy, stick this thingy in there, that’ll make’er go faster! I LOVE IT! And on the Mach 1, it makes the handling spec go red!
Just have to add this, why isn’t one of the upgrades a hammer or a crescent wrench?
Happy Racing!