Applying a good base tune. Details inside

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Hey y’all,

Shout out to trizzydizzy from reddit for the info. ive been using these factors as base tunes and its worked wonders. Anyone have success with a similar formula for a base tune? It makes it very simple/removes guess work however nothing is proven until you hit the track, but its worked for me. You basically just soften suspension/antiroll bars until you get desired turn in effect.

Gear Ratio: vary from track to track; the 0-60/120 and top speed measurements aren’t always relevant landmarks to tune for. The goal is to minimize shifts, while still staying in the peak of your power band. Lower the ratio if you’re having to shift too soon before many turns. Raise the ratio if you feel like the car bogs down into each up shift, just as long as it doesn’t make you need to add another shift to each straight section.

Camber: -2.5 to -3.5 in the front; -1.5 to -2.5 in the rear. This might seem unrealistic, but that’s because it is. Tire wear isn’t real life accruate, so you can abuse that and it won’t unnaturally and quickly wear your tires. It also results in even tire temps which is the tell-tale sign of ideal camber settings. This is a very significant setting to adjust.

Toe: 1 to 4mm front; -1 to -2mm rear. This gives enough turn in speed, without making it too twitchy or too much like driving a cinder block. If it’s twitchy, lower the front closer to zero. Rear only ever needs lower if the car seems very erratic in straight lines at high speed (ie classic cars with lots of power come to mind).

Caster: 4.5 to 5.5. Set it higher with slower tracks with lots of small radius turns; think nimbleness. Set it lower for higher speed tracks with long, wide radius turns; think high speed precision.

Spring Rate: 10-25% increase to stock’s settings, both front and rear. This can change as your weight distribution does with different mods (power vs handling). You can get to really stiff setting due to the low bump settings discussed later.

Ride Height: Second setting from the bottom is been always safe for me. Ideally this is as low as possible without “bottoming out”. Bottoming out isn’t that devistating in the game, unless you’re on part of the road you aren’t supposed to be on. If tuning for Nordschleife, give yourself another +1 or +2 to ride height. The track elevation changes are pretty frequent to need it and avoid some of the random oversteer you occasionally get

Anti Roll Bars: Increase front and rear by about 10%. If the car understeers, reduce it by half that amount, incrementally, until it feels correct. If it oversteers, you can reduce the rears in the same way, but usually oversteer comes from other factors. You have to feel how the car’s weight shifts from braking into a turn, in the turn, then accelerating out of it. It’s a bit tougher because you can’t adjust the flex in and out independently like you can with dampers and springs.

Rebound: 9.0 to 10.5 on the front, 8.0 to 9.5 on the rear. This tightens turn in and reduces oversteer. If you understeer, reduce fronts slightly; if you oversteer, reduce rears. Quicker rebound is generally better to better predict weight transfer in to turns. If you notice problems with the handling and you’re driving on intended track, then reduce the settings slightly until you feel consistent.

Bump: 2.5 to 4.0 front; 2.0 to 3.0 rear. This is another unrealistic setting. Like I said earlier, bottoming out isn’t that devastating unless you’re driving where you shouldn’t. This soft bump setting is why you can run such high spring stiffness and quick rebound without worrying too much about oversteer or understeer.

Downforce: Max out cornering. Start from there, reduce to speed dependent on track. Remember, aero won’t help at low speeds. So tracks with short corners and long straights (Sarthe, Long Beach) will get more benefit from low aero settings. Long, wide radius (Alps, Prague) turns get more benefit out of higher aero settings.

Brakes: preference whether you trail brake or early brake. Rear bias is trail, front bias is early. I run 95% brake force for some reason I have no good explanation for. I also prefer early braking because it’s more consistent, but trailing is generally faster if you don’t mess it up.

LSD Settings: drive the car with the above settings before adjusting LSD. The LSD can be fine tuned, but it can also be used as a crutch for consistency. That’s fine, some cars need it. And you won’t know it until your drive it first. If you need more info than the below on tuning LSDs, check this other post of mine out so you know what you’re looking for.

LSD Accel: 65-90%, higher the more horsepower you have. This can be preference based on how well you control throttle too. If you’re too binary with throttle and not gradual, you can handicap it with higher settings. It’s better to learn your throttle control and not use it as a crutch, or your car will bog down some like TCS often does.

LSD Decel: 15-40%. This is mostly about feeling and braking style, but I’ll lower it with heavy cars that seem to slide when I brake into turns. If you brake or let off the gas and it breaks from under you, lower it a little to keep it more predictable, but it might not fix it entirely. Again, this can be used as a crutch if you have poor throttle control when letting off the gas and not braking.

All this culminates to a car that understeers, but consistently stays planted to the ground. Understeer is preferred because the car is more predictable. Predictable makes for consistent times. Consistent times allow you to better measure the improvements in your driving. Remember, if you get faster and you don’t know why, then you can’t apply that knowledge to the next car/track.

Let me know what you think! Good racing!

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Gotta say, my base tunes fall between all these settings, except for the ARB’s.

I’d recommend people who are looking to get into tuning to take notes, and start building.

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Not bad at all. Build seems to favor stability.

I usually run super low front ARBs, high rear ARBs, turn aero to lowest point, and drop springs a bunch. I never raise the springs setting. Stock is usually too stiff for me.

However I would recommend to drop aero to the lowest settings. Usually you don’t need full aero if the build and balance of the car is good. Of course that all goes out the window for all out grip tracks like lime rock and laguna seca.

I would also say to loosen up the car as you get faster. The more responsive the car, the faster the laps.

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Funny you mentioned that because I was talking to a buddy about the same thing, as far as reducing aero on very stable cars. After testing I was noticing that my lap times were 1-2 seconds slower WITHOUT aero which I thought was strange. I usually tune with full aero as a rule of thumb.

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I do the complete opposite (min aero, or NO aero parts) to ensure I am not masking other issues with the tune as I tweak & test such.

PRKid
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Depends on what you’re driving and where. Kinda odd that the lap times dropped. Usually from my experience the times get faster. Or are you talking about the aero upgrades? That would create some issues.

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+1

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It’s a pretty good guide, Althuogh I do some things differently.

My personal preference is
-I use slightly less camber
-Toe is last to be used when nothing else works.
-I tend to use much softer springs overall (about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the slider from minimum) but there is few exceptions.
-ARB varies a lot depending on track/car but usually it is between 5.0-20.0
-Set aero to minimum → tune the other parts first → Drive the car → do other adjustments of needed → Drive again → adjust aero. This is so that I wouldn’t mask other issues with downforce, even thuogh my cars run mostly on 100%/75% aero setup, with few exceptions.

Also that differential, that’s great for RWD, but in case of FWD I usually go lower (acc 40-60% dec 0-10%) AWD will vary a lot more.

How ever there is many ways and the main point is to get a car feeling like you prefer, so in some cases there is no “right” way to do something, it comes to preference.

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You guys have a great point in tuning with minimum aero to start with. That makes a lot of sense in masking handling issues. I’m going to try that from here on out!

I also agree with softer springs and ARBs of less than 20. All of my tunes lately are like this, and I’m getting faster. (Although not fast enough, yet! :slight_smile: )

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You have the right idea But those setting will keep the car grippy and the front end won’t be responsive. the top guys use settings that are in between grip and drift the car will feel nutual the key is to tune a car that you can countersteer mid corner if you can master this technique with simulation steering then you will know if the car is tuned well or not based on how you can control the back end.If you watch the best guys closely you will see the way the back end wiggles in the entry mid and exit of the corner it’s almost like the car is bending.Keep tuning and always be trying new things and as your tuning get better you racing technique will too.

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Toe: 1 to 4mm front; -1 to -2mm rear. This gives enough turn in speed, without making it too twitchy or too much like driving a cinder block. If it’s twitchy, lower the front closer to zero. Rear only ever needs lower if the car seems very erratic in straight lines at high speed (ie classic cars with lots of power come to mind). Rear can also be used to fine tune the car and keep a loose car feeling more planted, and this doesnt necessarily mean only on straights. Caster should be used to fix the straight line instability.

Caster: 4.5 to 5.5. Set it higher with slower tracks with lots of small radius turns; think nimbleness. Set it lower for higher speed tracks with long, wide radius turns; think high speed precision. You have this backwards, the tighter the turns the lower you would want caster. The more sweeping the corners the higher settings usually work. Many either dont touch this or put it to min or max and adjust other settings to get the desired effect. This setting is much more important on a wheel than it is with a pad.

Anti Roll Bars: Increase front and rear by about 10%. If the car understeers, reduce it by half that amount, incrementally, until it feels correct. If it oversteers, you can reduce the rears in the same way, but usually oversteer comes from other factors. You have to feel how the car’s weight shifts from braking into a turn, in the turn, then accelerating out of it. It’s a bit tougher because you can’t adjust the flex in and out independently like you can with dampers and springs. Like swerve said dont be bashful with ARB’s it is not uncommon practice to run min/max settings here. This would be just like in real life, on fwd cars many people run a very stiff bar in the rear and remove even the factory bar in the front.

Rebound: 9.0 to 10.5 on the front, 8.0 to 9.5 on the rear. This tightens turn in and reduces oversteer. If you understeer, reduce fronts slightly; if you oversteer, reduce rears. Quicker rebound is generally better to better predict weight transfer in to turns. If you notice problems with the handling and you’re driving on intended track, then reduce the settings slightly until you feel consistent. This is not a bad starting point but dont be afraid to try things here. I often end up in the 11-12 and with open wheel cars sometimes as low as 1, do not lock yourself in these perameters.

Bump: 2.5 to 4.0 front; 2.0 to 3.0 rear. This is another unrealistic setting. Like I said earlier, bottoming out isn’t that devastating unless you’re driving where you shouldn’t. This soft bump setting is why you can run such high spring stiffness and quick rebound without worrying too much about oversteer or understeer. Same thing applies from what i just said in regards to rebound but reverse it.

Downforce: Max out cornering. Start from there, reduce to speed dependent on track. Remember, aero won’t help at low speeds. So tracks with short corners and long straights (Sarthe, Long Beach) will get more benefit from low aero settings. Long, wide radius (Alps, Prague) turns get more benefit out of higher aero settings. In forza unlike real life aero absolutely does have effects at slow speeds in which it shouldn’t work. Instead of putting it to minimum like the others do I typically leave it at default and try it and figure out if more or less aero would be beneficial, then i try both because lap times are the only true telling sign.

LSD Accel: 65-90%, higher the more horsepower you have. This can be preference based on how well you control throttle too. If you’re too binary with throttle and not gradual, you can handicap it with higher settings. It’s better to learn your throttle control and not use it as a crutch, or your car will bog down some like TCS often does. Dif does not effect the horsepower, the horsepower is whatever the car has however the dif effects where the driving force is coming from and whether the dif is locked or not. The more the dif is locked the better the acceleration is at the expense of oversteer. Also, the worse you are with trottle control the lower you should have the accel dif % not higher. Also, dont be afraid to try lower numbers than 65%, that is still quite high compared to what i run for some cars. 20%-30%

LSD Decel: 15-40%. This is mostly about feeling and braking style, but I’ll lower it with heavy cars that seem to slide when I brake into turns. If you brake or let off the gas and it breaks from under you, lower it a little to keep it more predictable, but it might not fix it entirely. Again, this can be used as a crutch if you have poor throttle control when letting off the gas and not braking. This is also backwards, for a more stable car you want higher decel settings not lower. If your car is very twitch off throttle/ under braking and likes to start sliding raise the decel settings until this characteristic goes away or gets to a comfortable point.

1 Like
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I have always used the aero kits on my builds. Now, I build with aero but remove it before starting my base tune. I have found that the aero will greatly mask mistakes in the tuning process. I have also found that front aero seems to make a car less responsive at times. I admit that tuning aero balance is still something I struggle with though.

As for the spring rates, I usually start the springs at 35% of the total mass of the car. (2500lbs X .35 = 875lbs) I will then multiply by the front weight distribution. So if the car has 60% of its mass in the front (875 X .60 = 525lbs in the front, the remainder in the rear.) This is only my starting point though. I have found that balancing the springs this way makes the car push, so with most cars will usually tend to add 5% more bias to the rear as apposed to the front, but at least I know that lowering the front spring rate from that point will usually correct steady state oversteer/understeer while not compromising breaking characteristics.

I will usually set ride height at 50% of the starting value.

From there I try to work the ARBs to fine tune the steady state cornering and then move on to the Dampening. I tune dampeners to ballance oversteer/understeer for corner entry/exit. I will use the telemetry to adjust the bump first. Just enough to keep the car from hitting the bump stops. As far as rebound goes, I will start at about 16 overall and redistribute by mass and then adjust as needed.

Caster is usually 2.0 front and 1.5 rear to start and leave Toe alone for fine tuning if needed.

Tire PSI at 32psi after running a few laps.

Brake tuning is based on feel so every car is different.

This is pretty much my tuning process.

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Why is it 35% of total mass? In my mind it would be 25% because there are 4 tires.

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The default spring rate on the race suspension starts at roughly 47% of the total mass for most cars. I have found that once I get under roughly 35% the car stats to feel slow to respond for my style of driving.

Next time you install a race suspension, add up the front and rear spring rates, then divide the sum by the mass of the car. You will see that the starting values are pretty stiff.

I have found that the car feels to unresponsive for me once I start getting the spring rates under 30%.

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Ahh ok. I tried your way of suspension tuning and the car immedialtley became more stable. You mentioned your dampening, starting at 16 and then redistributing by weight. Can you ellaborate on that?

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The most best way to answer this question is the tune that suits the way you control your car and gets you your personal best lap times that’s the best tune a tune that’s based around you.

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The same way I redistribute the spring settings. Multiply by the front weight percentage of the car.

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For tuning aero you divide rear weight by front weight and then multiply by the amount of max front downforce. For my Ferrari 360 which has 44% front it would be 56/44 = 1.27multiplied by 100 lbs front downforce (100) = 127 rear downforce.

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where did you get that aero data, looks quite good.

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Pretty good easy to use guide here for anyone who’s just starting out, good work dude :+1: