User blog:Aaryesh G./The use of tire width and wheel size adjustment to racing advantage

We all know ever since Midnight Club 3, there were wild car customization features compared to NFS games which had boring features of the same. There were real sponsors from the after market scene that made it all real in the game.

But one feature that intrests me most is the wheel adjustments.

Way long back when in 2005 I purchased Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, the early races were kinda hard with my starter car I chose, which was a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Upgrades were expensive and out of reach at the start.

So what I did was made the front wheels the largest width I could put (355 mm) and the highest size (19 inchs). The rear wheel's size were standard at 16 inch but the width was increased to 215 mm to keep it nice and light for the back end to swing out for drifts even though it's a FWD chassis. I even reduced the ride height to 2 inches lower than stock to prevent the car from rolling over and achieve higher top speed.

For a RWD (like the Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 in this case) car I made the rear wheels at the largest width possible (355 mm) and the size of the wheels are 18 inch and tire profile is set to 3. The front wheels have width of 215 mm and size of the wheels are 17 inch and tire profile is set to 3. Ride height is 2 inch at the front and 1 inch at the back.

These major adjustments gave a boost of acceleration with the NOS at the start of a race and could be as far as half a mile away from my computer opponents after the start of a race. My Mitsubishi Eclipse was insanely quick as well and could reach a top speed of 205 mph with NOS and 180 mph w/o NOS. And this was with only Level 1 upgrades installed which cheap anyways but my adjustments give the car the performance of adding Level 2/3 parts which is no cost option.

The car also holds the road very well even in the rain. It slips a bit but just enough for short drifting around some tight corners of San Diego.

For the Nissan Skyline GT-R, after doing the wheel adjustments and putting max. performance parts, I could reach a top speed of 276 mph with NOS and 233 mph without NOS. The car drifts nicely with smooth transition from corner to corner.

I tried the same trick on many other cars as I progressed through and nothing could stop my ride from winning.

By the way it is said in the McLaren F1 article of this wiki that the car suffers from flipping over and gains a lot of damage if not handled properly. My wheels adjustments for this RWD car stopped this thing from rolling over and the top speed I could reach was 299 mph with NOS and 257 mph without NOS. It doesn't exactly like to drift so I have to brake and accelerate into and out of corners.

Just amazes me that I can make a Skyline GT-R do 276 mph which is well over the topspeed mentioned in this wikia of 223 mph.

This same wheel adjustments I did when I got the MCLA Complete Edition and works a treat.

I can't do these sort of changes in any GTA or NFS games.