What should you consider when setting springs initially?
I’ve looked at a few open source tunes for hints and found this…
If you take the Front weight bias % and spread the weight of the total weight of the car first and then look at the front spring rates then they are usually around half the original weight.
Example: Car weighs 1000lbs, 50% weight bias. 500lbs front 500lbs rear. I’m finding on the A Class RWD Open sources that the Front would be set around 250lbs.
The rears are different and I suppose circumstantial to that kind of car, since the rear of the car usually needs more work on a RWD. I’ve converted these weights and bias’s into fractions. Front being 1/2 as confirmed before give or take some tweking. Rears are ranging from 2/3 to 3/5.
Questions
Is it a good idea to change springs using a converted fraction like I have done?
Example: I want 1/2 on the front and 3/5 on the back to start then do the math and apply the weight. Oh I’m oversteering with 3/5 so I’ll 2/3 of the weight there… That kinda thing.
When would you have softer rears than front and vice versa?
generally you would always have softer rear springs on front engine rwd . alot of the tuners take the stock spring rates and cut them by 25% . pull up your telemetry in test drive study how much it bottoms out on a track and which end is doing it the worst. make small adjustments and see if the car gets better.
as forusing fractions to help you set up your car there is nothing wrong with it at all it will provide you with a decent baseline to start with but you will still need to fine tune it on the track.
Thanks bud, and yeah because they aren’t exact halfs or quarters on the OS Tunes I figured if they had done it that way then fine tuning had taken place after that. At this point it doesn’t really matter if they did because I would end up at the same weight after fine tuning I guess.
Just trying to get my methods in order. Started on the T16 lastnight and it is a tough car to balance
The T16 is A Class. Mid engine RWD. Nearly 600bhp. Small wheel base and wheels lol. It’s a bit of a handful to say the least and I probably need to take out the 4.1L engine and stick in the 1.6 or something but it sounds sooooo beasty haha.
Maybe it’s overpowered but there’s signs that this thing can go! It runs Race Tires
I’m not sure this is going to be possible as all the cars have different weights… it might be possible to use fractions of the cars weight to get a general baseline for the car but even that would vary track to track and probably change depending on how your dampers are set. Im not an pro tuner but it might be more helpful and easier to get a general damper setting as opposed to springs?
I tune my shocks soft and do a couple laps with the telemetry on and just watch the travel as I drive around the to make sure that I’m close to, but not quite bottoming out on the roughest section of the track. I generally run the car on Catalunya to get a setting for flatter tracks then do the same thing in the alps for tracks that need stiffer suspension.
If you like harder springs and run a lot of laps you could use this system to find the softest drivable setting for the car and just slowly hardening springs till you find your quickest setting.
I’m sure there are a lot of math systems to get you a baseline tune but it will still need tweaking. I can get most of my tunes into top 500 which is decent but still a lot of room for improvement.
Here’s some feedback…
So I got to it last night on my Pug 205 T16 in A Class. It’s my first tuning attempt on Forza 5 and I used the fractions thing, which seemed to work, in fact I didn’t need much tuning of the springs at all afterwards as the car felt great(compared to what is was like the day before).
It has 606bhp, RWD Mid engined and the back end was ridiculous on Monday night, I just couldn’t get it to go around any corners.
Last night I reset back to the default build with no tuning to start again and swapped my twin turbo for a centrifugal supercharger, because it seems to handle the torque/power better, and applied the fractions to the springs, at first glance they looked too stiff for my liking so I dropped front and rear 100lbs exactly each but the ratio stayed the same. BOOM!.. I was getting around corners now. I had probably reduced the oversteer problem by 60% so the Fractions method really did help me out. It felt that much better I didn’t actually know what I needed to do next, still an oversteer problem but it’s a very encouraging car now.
I did 1/2 front minus 100lbs.
I wanted less on the back so did 3/5 on the rear minus 100lbs.