Drift, I hear you. I agree that saving and/or documenting a good setup is going to be essential to serious tuning in this game. I just have to make a mental note that ANYTHING that changes the weight of the car is going to screw up my settings. Luckily, once I get a car where I want it, I'm usually juggling engine upgrades and settings more than weight reduction, wheels, aero bits etc.
It would've been more realistic for certain engine upgrades to add or remove weight from the car. A 'Racing Intake' for an old 427 chebby in RL will remove maybe 40 lbs or so from the nose of the car. 'Racing Cams & Valves' (sorta implies aluminum heads) should also drop the engine weight significantly for an older engine. In this game, I haven't noticed any engine upgrades that affect weight other than an engine swap. Also of note, even though an engine swap may pull 175 lbs off the front of a 2300 lb car, the game still shows the same weight distribution F/R. Either way, it doesn't appear that most enigine upgrades add anything to the weight of the car, so I don't have to worry about the settings getting fuggered when I play with them.
I could sit down and try to figure out a formula that modeled accurately the 'fuggering' as weight goes up and down, but since I have already discovered that I don't like the fuggered settings, I don't care to duplicate them.
On another note, bazdc2 sent me a Dino to test out last night. It's a much more responsive setup than mine and a little less forgiving. I'll post a time when I get a chance to run a few more laps in it. I expect a 1:59 on Mugello, I hope for a 1:58 (personal best), but I'm pretty sure the car will do a 1:56.
Is anyone else running a Dino on the QuickRank tracks or Mugello? I'm getting that competitive urge again!