Tuning - sharing and ideas

Is there anywhere in OZFM for sharing and discussing tuning and builds? I've been *trying* to tune since, well, GP2 on the PC (anyone remember that gem?) and I've never been any good at it really, but giving it a serious crack in FM5 and would like to know what a few of the quicker guys think of some of them....If anyone's interested I've just shared an 200SX A class which I think is pretty nicely balanced..

I'll have a go mate, what sorta tracks it suited to?
 I feel a hot lap comp coming on, it's about time we had one on F5, anyone else keen?

Sounds like a good idea Stikman. I've only just began to have a more of an in depth look to the tuning side of things too. I should get around to posting up the C class Celica I built. Love the lamp pods on the dlc one!   

i absolute suck at anything to do with tuning lol, im running myself in two different series atm and both of them are Non-Tuned lol

Just did a couple laps in it on Rd America, it's ok and has good speed but needs more turn in. Maybe post up your settings n we can help you get it sorted.

GP2 - many and hour of my childhood went missing in that game...

Everyone tunes to suit there own style, what works for me might not work for you...

Try this (shamelessly copied from somewhere else) :

Tire Pressure

Tire pressure is one of the most important factors when it comes to car tuning. Having good tires will help you get the best out of your engine and will transfer that power more efficiently onto the track.

Tire pressure can affect the grip of a car on the road, responsiveness, and wear. As such, it’s important to adjust both front and back tires separately.

Generally, you want to have 32 PSI on your tires but being between 30-34 degrees is just fine. However, it’s best for you to give it a test run and heat up the tires to race temperatures to get a more accurate reading.

When you do the test run make sure to pay attention to the tire temperatures and take note of which side of the tires are hotter.

If the edges are hotter than the center, then you need to increase the pressure by a bit. Vice versa if the center is hotter than the edge.


Gearing

Gearing has to do with the gear system of the car. The settings that you see here can be changed to give you more acceleration or top speed You can change the Final Drive gear ratios, or you can change the gear rations of each gear individually.

You should be looking at the handy stats given to you on the left. These update every time you make a change in the gear ratios.

The main gist of things is that if you increase the gear ratios, then you’ll lower your top speed, but increase your acceleration. Move the slider to the right and you’ll see the ‘0 to 100mph’ stat get lower, move it to the right, and you’ll see an increase in highest possible speed.

These settings are mostly dependent on the kind of racer you are and what kind of track you’ll be on. If it’s a mostly straight track where you can expect to hit top speed, then you’d probably want to set the gear ratio a bit to the left of the median mark.

If it’s a twisty-turny kind of track where you probably won’t even be in the sixth gear for long periods, then you’ll definitely want the boost to acceleration that a high ratio (moving slider to the right) will give you.


Alignment

Alignment basically affects your car’s grip, by changing how the car’s tires are tilted. There are three settings in this section, called Camber, Toe and Front Caster, and we’ll be talking about them in detail.


Camber

Camber is basically the tilt of the tires along a horizontal axis. You can either have negative Camber, in which the tops of the tires are leaning inwards, or you have have positive camber, in which the tops of the tires are leaning outwards.

Camber affects the car’s grip and it’s settings change whether your car is better at cornering or driving in a straight line.

When your tires are set in negative camber (the tops are closer) then the car will have increased grip while cornering and will also have reduced understeer. However, this setting will reduce the grip of the car while traveling in a straight line.

When your car is set in positive Camber (the tops are further apart), you will have reduced oversteer. It will also increase your grip in a straight line but will make the vehicle more unstable while cornering. You can tune camber by running a couple of test laps and taking note of the camber of the wheels on turns and straight runs.

For the most part you need to tune the camber settings so that they’re as close to 0 as possible or slightly less. On turns you’ll notice that one side will usually be positive and the other will be negative.

For tuning use this instruction; For left turns, your right tire should be at 0 degrees or less, while for right turns, your left tire should be at 0 degrees or less.


Toe

Like Camber, Toe is the angle of the tires, but this time, it’s around the vertical axis. Your tires can have either ‘inner’ or ‘outer’ Toe. When your tires have inner Toe then the front of your tires are angled inwards. This setting increases the tendency of the car to travel in a straight line and resist turning. If you have outer Toe, then your car will naturally attempt to enter a turn.

Here is a list of the settings that you can have and their effects:

Front Toe + Rear Toe 0
Better Corner Entry Any Car.

Front Toe – Rear Toe 0
Reduce Steer Sensitivity Bad Corner Entry.

Front Toe 0 Rear Toe +
Under steer tendencies but Better Corner Exit in any Car and stability under braking.

Front Toe 0 Rear Toe -
Slow Corner Exit.

Front Toe + Rear Toe +
Provides stability under braking and creates over steer tendencies in cornering.

Front Toe + Rear Toe -
Amazing Handling on any car but can cause under steer.

Front Toe – Rear Toe +
Amazing Handling on any car but can cause over steer.

Front Toe – Rear Toe -
Oval track.



Front Caster

Caster is the angle at which the steering pivot axis is tilted forward or backward from vertical, as seen from the side. In an actual car, there will be ball joints connect your wheels and steering column.

The angle between the joint and the steering is referred to as the caster angle. Adjusting this caster angle modifies the straight line stability of the car.

If you’ve got a positive caster, you’ll have better straights but slightly difficult turns. Vice versa for low caster.

Remember that, as you drive, the negative caster increases since the suspension system and tires move through steering lock. This way, you can increase the caster a little, and still have negative caster for extra stability when turning.
Anti-Roll Bars

The Anti-Roll bars settings contribute to the stability of the vehicle. They are able to restrict the unnecessary movement and sway of the body of the car while cornering. This system ties the right and left sides of the suspension system together and makes the car more level by preventing it from swaying more towards one side than the other.

If you decrease the front anti-roll stiffness, you will find an overall reduction in understeer.

Doing the opposite will increase the understeer. However keep in mind that too much stiffness can cause the inside of the tires to lift off the ground during a hard turn. The balance of front and rear anti-roll stiffness affects the balance between understeer and oversteer.


Springs

In this tab you can change up the stiffness of the springs that make up the suspension system of the car. It also controls how the car’s weight is transferred under acceleration braking and cornering. Basically this setting affects the amount of understeer and oversteer that you go through.

If you have a low stiffness, they will absorb bumps and shocks better, but will reduce the responsiveness of the vehicle. If you stiffen the springs of your rear tires, you’ll increase the overall oversteer. Softening the springs instead will increase understeer.

Ride height is another setting you can change here. This setting can change your center of gravity, and affect stability.

Generally, you want to have a low center of gravity, but you don’t want to bottom out and lose control. Therefore, you should test it out on a couple of maps and figure out how low can you go.


Damping

In the Damping tab you can change the rebound stiffness and bump stiffness settings to be either soft or hard. Tuning these settings can improve handling by increasing and decreasing grip. It essentially controls the suspension’s rate of travel in two directions.

Rebound damping controls the rate of extension as the suspension rebounds away from the wheel wells. Increasing the front bump damping stiffness will increase transitional understeer of the car.

However, keep in mind that too much bump damping will cause problems on rough surfaces. Decreasing the stiffness of the damping in the front tires will increase the transitional oversteer.

Increasing the front bump damping stiffness will increase transitional understeer of the car. However, keep in mind that too much bump damping will cause problems on rough surfaces. Decreasing the stiffness of the damping in the front tires will increase the transitional oversteer.



Downforce

Downforce is a product of lift and drag which is created by the flow of air over and underneath the car. In airplanes, lift is created because the air that travels over the top of the wing goes faster than the air traveling under the wings. This creates a kind of vacuum which allows it to fly.

The converse must happen to race cars. The worst thing that can happen during a race is that the car takes off, since it will usually result in a crash. As such we need to create downforce that makes the car stick to the ground.

A delicate balance must be struck, as too much downforce will slow down the car due to drag.



Brake    THE DAM SLIDER IS REVERSED TO THE OTHER GAMES!!! (so sliding rear will make more front pressure)

The brakes on a car are among the most important component.

The brake bias of the car is the balance of power between the front and rear brakes. If there is a bias of 65/35, then that means that the front brakes are getting 65% of the power. This setting is important when you want to adjust how you corner.

If your brakes are biased towards the front, the car will be tighter while entering a turn. Having the opposite and setting your brakes to be biased towards the rear will cause the car to be looser when entering a turn.

We recommend a forward brake bias of 65-70%. This is because whenever you brake the car, you’ll be transferring the weight forward, to the front tires. This causes the rear tires to lock up, since there is less weight on them for the moment.

The brake pressure setting is what controls your stopping power. Everyone has their own style when it comes to this, but broadly speaking, you’ll be doing one of these:

   On Demand: This is when you’re pulling the trigger all the way back.
   On Power: This is when you’re pulling the trigger all the way back, but with acceleration.
   Off Throttle Down Shift Half Brake: This is when you pull the trigger back halfway.

When you’re going On Demand, you want a bit less brake pressure and you want the tires to skid only when the trigger is fully pulled. For this, start at 100% and reduce 5% at every run until you hit the sweet spot.

When going On Power you’ll be doing the same thing as in On Demand. The only difference is that you want to get into a race-brake situation where you are locking the front tires and burning the rear ones.

Off Throttle, squeezing the brakes coming out of the corner is similar to squeezing the throttle, you will learn it over time and becomes second nature before long.


Differential

Differential systems are needed because of the inherent difference in rotations that a car’s wheels go through when taking a turn. Because of the width of the car, the outer wheels will always need to rotate more and travel further than the inner wheels.

Differential allows the tires on either sides to travel at different rates. There are two settings to change here; Acceleration and Deceleration.

Acceleration controls at what point the differential locks while on gas. Having a higher percentage of acceleration will prevent each wheel from slipping, which allows you to harness more power when exiting a corner.

Deceleration controls at what point the differential locks when you let off the gas, normally when entering a corner. If you have a high rate here, the car will be more stable. However, it can also cause understeer and makes your car less agile.

stikman wrote:Just did a couple laps in it on Rd America, it's ok and has good speed but needs more turn in. Maybe post up your settings n we can help you get it sorted.

Thanks Stiko, I'd appreciate any thoughts - I'll post the whole build/tune as soon as I can. Turn in is something that I struggle with - I often find it hard to improve without destabilising the car and/or introducing oversteer in some form or other....

Maybe if you wanted a 'base' tune you could download "Forza 5 Tuning Calculator by Feuerdog" on either apple or android, pretty sure it's called FT5 (Forza Tuning 5), might have a look later and see if it's available for windows phones   

Happy tuning, but keep in mind not much comes free these days..

SG1 RAZOR wrote:Maybe if you wanted a 'base' tune you could download "Forza 5 Tuning Calculator by Feuerdog" on either apple or android, pretty sure it's called FT5 (Forza Tuning 5), might have a look later and see if it's available for windows phones   

Happy tuning, but keep in mind not much comes free these days..

Is this the one? SG1
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/forzatune-for-fm5/id815713882?mt=8

Not all of the information recoil has quoted is accurate. I was having a quick skim over it looking for any atom of info I could ram into my intellectual tuning bible   

For example, the brake bias recommendation of 65% to 70% to the front is *way* off. Though that may be fantastic for your real life v8supercar, this is forza and we have to play by forza's rules. Even the description on the rhs of the tune setup screen recommends to avoid extremes.

I would recommend only adjusting the brake bias by 2-3% or 5% max either way. I get a strong feeling from changes this small in brake bias, but, my feeling isn't your feeling. And that goes for all aspects of tuning. At the end of the day, after you gather all the advise you can and study the description of every tuning parameter, its what you FEEL that makes the biggest difference.

Personally, I would stick to reading and trying to best understand each and every description at the right hand side of the tune setup screen... Its a long and dark road when you don't know where youre going... blah blah have fun!

Lots of interesting advice here, and I've seen and read a lot of descriptions of how the various components impact the car before, but agree that feel has a lot to do with it - there are so many 'descriptions' of how dampers work, it can get confusing to say the least. Personally, I like: 'They stop the car from bouncing on the springs - bump lets you squat and rebound makes you sit up' I do like the tips above from recoil on Toe though, and am keen to investigate this further. Brake bias - I have never played with this, but I have seen how fast you can enter corners Semper, so I will start toying with that as well...

Anyways, if you're interested, here's the build for the 200sx (on the upper edge for torque I think in a car this light, but I'm finding driving it pretty fun):

1st - Engine conversion to 5.7L V8

Engine....
Air Filter - Street
Intake Manifold -Sport
Fuel System - Sport
Ignition - Race
Exhaust - Race
Camshaft - Race
Valves - Sport
Displacement - Race
Pistons - Race
Oil & Cooling - Stock
Flywheel - Street

Platform & Handling
Everything maxed out

Drivetrain
Everything maxed here also

Tyres & Rims
Rim Style - Sport - Dymag 9 Spoke
Rim size - 18" F&R
Compound - Race
Width Front - 245/35R18
Width Rear - 275/30R18

Aero
Fully adjustable F & R

Tune:
Pressure
Shows 2.0 on screen, but use telemetry to go at about 2.39 Kpa in the turns (F&R)

Gearing
untouched

Alignment
Camber -1.2F / -0.3R
Toe - +0.1F / -0.1R
Caster - 5.0

ARB
17.14F / 17.46R

Springs
105.0F / 100.9R
Ride height - 14.8 F&R

Dampers
Rebound - 7.0F / 6.5R
Bump - 3.7F / 3.2R

Aero
39F / 73R

Diff
Accel 13
Decel 17

Not that I would expect to be competitive, but I think this would be a good car for a single make series, as it can change direction quickly, has bags of torque, can push hard at speed and is quite a handful (at least, IMHO)

That's quite a lot of power in that car. Possibly too much? If have to test it but it looks like a drift build to me.

Things like clutch, flywheel and driveshaft I try to avoid, unless I have no other way to make my car reach B500 or A600, as parts like those won't make a difference to your cars performance like a couple extra kw's or a tire width would.

Im just having a guess but is the car pretty easy to coerce into lighting up the rear end out of corners? Try swapping your damping settings to the opposite (6.5F/7.0R & 3.2F/3.7R) that you have them and you may find some turn in. Your roll bar settings lean towards oversteer a little too but they are pretty close so the springs might balance it. Im no guru just a thought I had as I looked through   Hell I might go build this later and see how my judgement just from looking at the settings is. You must like the old vn commy eh? One wheel peelies ha ha

Yes Dektra, definitely possibly too much I will look at the damping Sly, but I have become a FIRM believer that FM5 has ARB suggestions all wrong - I like balancing them to the reverse weight distribution of the car (ie heavy front, stiff arb at the back) - I find stiff springs and stiff arb at the same end is a problem... (this is a black art, yeah? a million monkeys, typing on a million typewriters......)

Each to their own dude thats just what I saw that was different to the way I put my tunes together. I think f5 lets people build the tunes around how they like a car to feel. The guys I have chatted with just about every person has a differing preference on the way their car should feel and a lot of the time they run very similar times. If it feels good to you then you will probably put down a nice time anyways   

Dazza4610 wrote:

SG1 RAZOR wrote:Maybe if you wanted a 'base' tune you could download "Forza 5 Tuning Calculator by Feuerdog" on either apple or android, pretty sure it's called FT5 (Forza Tuning 5), might have a look later and see if it's available for windows phones   

Happy tuning, but keep in mind not much comes free these days..

Is this the one? SG1
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/forzatune-for-fm5/id815713882?mt=8

Yeah mate, that's it, not sure on how it performs?, but did try the FM4 version and appeared better than stock tunes, I like the slider for understeer and oversteer, plus gearing.

Sly Dux wrote:Each to their own dude thats just what I saw that was different to the way I put my tunes together. I think f5 lets people build the tunes around how they like a car to feel. The guys I have chatted with  just about every person has a differing preference on the way their car should feel and a lot of the time they run very similar times. If it feels good to you then you will probably put down a nice time anyways   

Thanks Sly - I downloaded your setup, and I found it quicker for sure - felt much nicer at the front than mine. I'd like to know what differs on your tune to mine - that would really give me some valuable insight.

I will chuck em up tomorrow if i get a chance dude.

Ok exact same build mate

Tyre pressure 2.1\1.9
Gears stock
Camber 2.0\1.5
Toe 0\0
Caster 5
Anti roll bars 17.14\9.36
Springs 104.2\108.2
Ride height 14.5\14.7
Rebound 6.8\7.2
Bump 4.1\4.2
Aero 39\73
Brakes 50\100
Diffs 36\16 (Adjust these as you want. Less accel is more vn commodore less decel is more turn ins when not on throttle)

Enjoy its a good public tune   

Thanks Sly - I'll play around with this some more. I also downloaded the Tuning Calculator app that Razor and Dazza mentioned. Interesting results from that - the tune it suggested was very different - really soft at the back, which was surprising - I'll be interested to see how it drives.

Have shared b600 tune for 1985 Mazda RX7. I feel it goes ok, would be keen to know what others think ☺

CosmicChimera wrote:Have shared b600 tune for 1985 Mazda RX7. I feel it goes ok, would be keen to know what others think ☺

Just went to check out your car, and realised I haven't got any DLC. Might have to bite the bullet and spend some extra money on this game now. I've shared a couple of B class cars if anyone wants to check them out. The 1969 302 boss mustang, Kia cee'd, and an R33 skyline. They all run pretty darn goo.

Thanks nachos - didn't even realise it was DLC I shared this after doing a fairly good time (for me) on one of the tracks with short straights (cant recall whether it was Laguna Seca or Bugatti). After more driving in it I found it was not much good on the faster tracks. Keen to try out your B class!

Cheers mate. I've tuned them with no assists and they are very easy to drive. All handling and medium sized tracks. I run very high brake pressure, so they can lock up if you're not used to it. Let me know what you think if you run them !