Wade, if the game moans about materials, then it's the MAT file(s) that hold too many entries. But chances are that you'll have to reduce pixies too after that. Using a hood that uses less materials/pixelmaps is a good idea yeah.

QTZ, I had a look at the Swamp Rat and don't see anything wrong with its wheels? However you said it only happens sometimes..? Very strange if that is the case. But it might happen if the game loads it as an opponent and swap its wheel model with another car that shares the same model identifier (usually another addon car with non-renamed model identifiers).

@Wade, when you have stuff not working like these corrupted txt files, just zip it up and share it here. This way we can report on what is the issue precisely
Not sure I understand correctly what you're trying to achieve, but for the default hood just make the txt file load the resources (PIX MAT DAT ACT) of the Eagle's bonnet? EAGLBNT.PIX EABGLBNT.MAT SILVER.MAT EBONNET.DAT EBONNET.ACT. Though if you're ok with it being untextured you can skip the MAT and PIX, that'll make more room for the C2 car's mat and pixies.

BTW usualy when it says that TXT file is corrupted it's because you forgot to change the very first line (the filename).
"Insufficient model slots in storage area" shouldn't happen with a car AFAIK. Again sharing the files that generate this error would help me help you.

For Rodhell's wheel position, just load the C2 car in Plaything2 as I did toward the end of my video, and do the same I do (enlarge the column with the components on the left to let it show XYZ coordinates entirely, double click on a front wheel to make PT2 center on it, then zoom on it to get better coordinates while placing the mouse in its center. you do that for both front and back wheels to get Y and Z values, you can grab X values from top view.)

Ok I finally had a look at your files.
First, the supplied .mat files for combine, 37ford and fatline didn't have the .pix added so that was annoying.
Then I noticed that for some reason you based on (or tried to load?) other addon cars resources. Combine tries to load Coupe de Grace simple/bonnet models, Delorean seems based on Bigdump, 37ford on Bourak.
Don't do that and only base the txt file on a stock C1 car. For example I hadn't Bourak installed so it failed to find the files. Also you stripped the simple/bonnet models (DAT) from Combine and Delorean while trying to load other addons' ACT files, that makes the game crash as it can't find the models needed by the ACT files.
Actually you seem to have mixed stuff from several cars..?

Fatlane can't be brought in C1 like that at all, it has way too many materials (60) AND MODELS (30) (that's news to me).

Delorean has too many materials too (50), removing 10 materials seem difficult without working on the model properly in 3dsMax. Also you had based it on Bigdump somehow but you replaced the wheel grooves without changing the groovyfunkrefs just above, that made the game crash too.

Just replacing the Bourak stuff made the 37ford work ingame, didn't notice a problem with the wheels, just missing textures.

Combine, I just replaced Coupe's resources and added back the missing DAT files to make it work. Missing textures too.


So yeah, as you can see not all C2 cars are easily portable to C1. You must first make sure that the C2 car has no more than 40 materials in its .mat file, or else you'll have to remove some and it'll look bad ingame. Then apparently the car shouldn't have too many models either, must be pretty rare honestly.

Anyway, I think I'm now set to do the C2-to-C1 video again, but I'll make use of PT2 this time.

Just posting the videos again:

Whole process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmRiL8BBE-Y (should be remade)
Additional step (merging the main model): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrHHGYmjykg
Making a bonnet out of the main model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkQf6RZTYuw

Sadly no, there is no convenient way to simplify a model's overal topology.

While Carma1 doesn't really care about onscreen polycount (in software mode at least), I understand such geometry density often translates into visual noise when rendered in lower res + paletted textures. Depends on the model really.

BTW in my experience, investing a lot of time on someone else's model can become frustrating. So now the first thing I do is checking how the textures downgrade to the carma palette. If the result is poor, I go no further...