Hey guys, I've seen a lot of people asking for tuning tips and hints. I'm not going to say I'm a complete expert, but I have had a lot of success with tuning and my set ups reducing lap times by a fair amount. I've started this thread for anyone to pose any questions about set ups or tuning that you may like answered. If you want to know what something does (in easy to understand words!!) or how to cure a particular problem, post it here and I can look at it or others who are skilled at tuning can try help also. Keep in mind that driving style also has something to do with it. I like a very 'pointy' car, whereby I expect the front end to go exactly where I point it and then I take care of the rear end myself. In other words, I prefer oversteer to understeer! So let the questions flow people, I'll try my best to answer and if I can't, hopefully others will help.
you ripper leeboy , ill start the ball rolling here. Q. when do you prefer a much lower ride height? is it dependant on the track? or the car you have?
Ride height is all about a balance really. A lower ride height will offer better downforce as you get a bit of a ground effect at higher speed. The downside is that the car can bottom out under braking or even acceleration if set too low. A good example is Monza. Obviously a low downforce circuit. You would want a reasonably low ride height so you can get maximum downforce through the turns without needing to apply more wing. It will also make you slightly slipperier down the straights. Monaco (or Cote D'Azur as GT calls it) is a high downforce track. You want a high ride height here as the car will get pushed down with more downforce. For cars without wings, a basic rule can apply. Low ride height, firm springs gives good speed. High ride height and softer springs makes for better grip and cornering. Tweaking dampers, cambers etc can also make for a better set up. Just play around with it. Adjust ride height to lowest and turn a couple of laps, then adjust to highest for a couple of laps and feel the difference.
You probably think this is cheating but because I have very little idea about all the aspects around tuning I use this website to first get an idea and then modify from there. http://www.gt5-tuning.com/index.php?title=Special:AllPages The website does not list every car in the game but everyday the selection grows. Basically it's all the tuner information that is on GT Planet pulled into the one place for easy reference. If you did not already know about this site it probably blows all my chances for future events but hey, I have been so impressed by the way Carn, Outta, Bonus and heaps of others have setup this league that I thought I could give something back even though it's not mine. My first attempt to give something back was fixing up the Wiki but all that resulted in was a few hours wasted at work and people asking WTF have I been doing all day to which all I could say was, f'n excel file kept freezeing my laptop and it put me so behind :lol:
Leeboy, hope you don't mind but I think I can add to your ride height answer. Lower ride height = increased stability through high speed corners. But too low and you risk bottoming out the car on the track, or bottoming out suspension travel, which will result in premature sliding and a 'slippery/skatey' feel due to inadequate weight transfer. Lower ride height should usually be coupled with increased spring rate to make sure you don't hit bump stops. Greater ride height = increased manouvreability and grip through tight corners and can improve ride quality through rough track. But generally low is better. But it also increased centre of gravity height and thus can increase body roll which can decrease responsiveness.
You can almost liken it to how you would move and position your body. When you need stability, you crouch a bit lower, open your stance and firm your limbs up (low ride height, firm springs). If you want to be able to manoeuvre quickly, you are lighter on your feet and stand up a bit straighter and taller (higher ride height, softer springs)... Sounds weird, but try it and you'll get it...a car reacts much the same way we do to inputs as we're both fighting against the same forces of gravity and air...
Thats a good link cargando.Heaps of info there for tunes.Cheers If I can add to the ride height question. As Leeboy and Koastr said - Lower centre of gravity = Better handling. Imagine taking your daily street car and jacking up the suspension by 3 metres,it would roll over on every corner! The lower you can get the centre of gravity the better. Although a cars suspension only has a certain amount of travel so therefore can only be lowered within the limits of that travel,if you lower the car too much it can adversly effect the cars handling.For instance in a corning situation the suspension has loaded up with the cars weight (depending on speed its in relataion to the amount of g-force) causing the suspension to compress on the outside of the corner and decompress on the inside.If the compression side hits full travel then it will stop against the suspensions bump stops (rubber grommets to stop the shocks destroying themselves) this is when bumpsteer occurs.As the bumpstops are usually rubber or a hard polymer they rebound causing the car to bounce.What you feel is the car jump off line.This is bump steer and it can happen on the front and rear.As referred to different tracks require different ride heights due to the roughness of the circuit.
So reading the tuning guide if you lower the car ride height you cant soften your spring rate too much can you?
Quite the opposite...if you go too soft on springs, the car will bottom out. You need to have the springs stiff enough so the car doesn't bottom, but soft enough to handle the bumps and not jump all over the place...
Pretty much carn. The idea is to keep the car off the bump stops while maximising the tyre grip.It depends on the car and on what the driver likes.Some drivers prefer softer settings some harder its really personal preference and vehicle design.Spring rates could be discussed for hours on length.Race teams spend countless ours testing spring rates and damper rates to tune there cars to each individual curcuit. Generally when lowering your car you need to modify the shocks (dampers) as well as they need to operate within a certain zone of the shock to do what they are designed to do(In GT I take it this is automatically done).The same goes for springs you need to usually increase the spring rate to lessen the chance of bottoming.In the same token its important to run a correct spring rate that will keep the tyres in constant contact with the surface. Heres a good write up on spring rates. We need to find a compromise among ride height and spring rates which gives us as much grip as possible while keeping the car off the bump rubbers. Our options are high and soft, or low and stiff, or somewhere in between. We'd like to make the suspension as soft as possible for more grip, especially on bumpy circuits. But when we do this, we've got to raise the ride height to keep the suspension off the bump rubbers. (We can also increase the damper stiffness in bump, which will help keep the car up over bumps, but there's a diminishing return to this; go too stiff on the dampers, and grip and traction will be seriously compromised and stability will degrade as the car dances all over the road.) Going high, however, causes more weight transfer. We can see the effects of this in cornering, as the outside tire tempuratures go up, and in braking, as the car becomes more unstable because more weight is being transferred away from the rear, bringing the rears closer to lockup. We can compensate for this by increasing camber to even the tire temps (implying that we've gotten the tire contact patch flat against the road again) and by moving the brake balance more to the front. However, both of these measures reduce overall braking power - increasing braking distances - and increased camber also hurts traction. We can also adjust tire temperatures by increasing anti-roll bar stiffness; making the car stiffer in roll will tend to reduce roll, keeping the tires flatter against the track and helping avoid the need to increase camber. Indeed, this is just what was done in real life in the 60's. The cars tended to be relatively softly spring, but stiff in roll. Just exactly what spring rates and ride height are optimal is a matter of taste and experimentation. I don't like a lot of roll; to me it makes the car feel like it's wallowing. (Maybe it's my karting background!) Obviously the best values at a flat, smooth circuit like Long Beach may be very different from the best values at a bumpy place like Zandvoort or a high G circuit like Spa. At a flat, smooth circuit you don't need as much suspension movement so you can run softer and/or lower than at a more vertically demanding circuit. Incidentally, although GPL's setup menu permits bump rubbers no shorter than 1 inch, the physics module will accept .5 inch bump rubbers. I've begun to use .5 inch bump rubbers almost everywhere now. This allows me to run a bit lower, reducing weight transfer, while not having to stiffen the suspension more. (See the discussion of Bump Rubbers under GRE's Extended Ranges features for an explanation of why I feel this is the right thing to do.) The only exception is the Nurburgring, where it's impossible to keep the car off the bump rubbers because the vertical loads are so high. We need to find a compromise among ride height and spring rates which gives us as much grip as possible while keeping the car off the bump rubbers. Our options are high and soft, or low and stiff, or somewhere in between. We'd like to make the suspension as soft as possible for more grip, especially on bumpy circuits. But when we do this, we've got to raise the ride height to keep the suspension off the bump rubbers. (We can also increase the damper stiffness in bump, which will help keep the car up over bumps, but there's a diminishing return to this; go too stiff on the dampers, and grip and traction will be seriously compromised and stability will degrade as the car dances all over the road.) Going high, however, causes more weight transfer. We can see the effects of this in cornering, as the outside tire tempuratures go up, and in braking, as the car becomes more unstable because more weight is being transferred away from the rear, bringing the rears closer to lockup. We can compensate for this by increasing camber to even the tire temps (implying that we've gotten the tire contact patch flat against the road again) and by moving the brake balance more to the front. However, both of these measures reduce overall braking power - increasing braking distances - and increased camber also hurts traction. We can also adjust tire temperatures by increasing anti-roll bar stiffness; making the car stiffer in roll will tend to reduce roll, keeping the tires flatter against the track and helping avoid the need to increase camber. http://eaglewoman.rscsites.org/gpl/grehelp/ride.htm
onya turbo more testing required i reckon. I took 5 seconds a lap off in that m3 gtr of yours that little beast of yours is a good option
Trying out the fairlady z z34 08. will do some testing on grand valley as that is first track, will have room open at 930pm or a bit before vic/nsw time unless someone beats me to it. bounce ideas off each other.
another good site which is actually run by our very own nasanu in div 2 http://www.consoleracer.com/ alot of tunes there.
Whover else is running the csl, im having trouble with it on laguna so looking for a good set up. lee you testing this week?
Yeah same here. The RX7 is OK but the back end is just to loose. Maybe Beau cause your running the same car can you point me in the right direction and send me a PM? Cheers, Rob
got some good tips from beau tonight, car is feeling alot better with more to come. now i gotta get used to the supra again before sunday
hey mate, not so much a tuning question as it is set-up, whats your opinion on driving guides such as ABS, traction control etc? Im finally realising most licence tests in particular are virtually impossible to Gold unless you fiddle with these settings. Im starting to wonder if your just better off never using Traction Control, or if ABS actually has any purposes?
I use TC at 1 on high powered RWD cars cos I'm using a controller and throttle control is difficult, but for everything else I turn it off. You can fiddle with it as you see fit, but ABS will stop your brakes from locking under full brake. I use ABS 1 for everything. Try it out with max vs zero and see for yourself what happens and which suits your style more.
