I am looking at a tune for this r34 and i went on the highway to see how the gears are set. And of course i see this
Last gear has about a 1000 rpm which is useless. Now normally as far i’ve come to learn, last gear should hit slightly into the redline. Because the higher in the rev range, the more horse power the car should produce, correct? But then the car still manages to reach it’s max HP, way before the redline. The top speed is almost there as well (170) and yes i know just because it says it can do 170 doesn’t mean it will. Obviously top speed doesn’t even matter for most events, even for sprints races.
But then it also seems to me that if the gears are as long as they are, the car will simply loose acceleration towards the top end. So it’s not going to be very good at the sprint events, even if i’m never reaching that top speed.
I have to note that the car is using a sport transmission in order to save a few PI. But even then just tunning the final gears ratio like this is a very very simple fix to achieve proper gearing:
Most cars in the game will hit their top speed at the right point in the rev range at roughly the same spot on the graph. If not, then use a race transmission and shorten up those last 2 gears.
And this tune is made by a popular tunner who has over a million downloads and over 10 000 followers. Wow. I honestly had no idea most player were this bad at tunning.
The only case i find where you’d want some useless gear is for cross country. And specifically for the 2 events that start from the caldera mountain. Due to them being sprints + long downhills, you’ll just have to tune it so that you don’t bang the rev limitter all the way.
Most of my tunning knowledge would come from HokiHoshi’s guides on youtube but even he seems to be misleading people a bit. I learned from him that for as long as your last gear hits the end of the graph then it’s good enough but it actually isn’t. If you tune it like that you’re either not reaching your top speed at ALL, or your gears are too long and you’re loosing acceleration. Maybe even both. Most of the tunes i’ve downloaded seem to make the same mistake.
Gear tuning in this game can vary quite a bit depending on use case, engine, and PI efficiency.
Honestly, I try not to think about it too much and just go for the gearing I like, so I’m not the biggest expert on the subject, but I do know that driving automatic can sometimes require different gearing than manual. Shift points, particularly on long uphills, can be a pain point for automatic users that manual users don’t need to worry about as much. Turbos, especially old turbos, also like those shorter early gears relative to their NA and supercharged counterparts. Stuff like that can complicate things. Heck even driving style can be a factor.
I’d agree with ignoring the end of the graph based on my experience.
Side note, I can’t use sport transmissions. They make a whine in this game that gives me a headache. Some of my cars really would benefit from the sports transmission but I’d rather lose than have my head explode. You can sort of tune the street transmission though. It seems to set itself when installed, so if you install it early in the build the gears will be shorter.
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My guess is that it was tuned for some event and the last gear wasnt meant to be ever used. It looks like it takes forever to get to anywhere close to top speed and theres very few events that would allow it to be wide open for that long. I dunno, just my guess.
Edit … Also, i notice that it just barely hits 60 before the shift to 3rd … which makes me think they wanted to 0-60 time to not factor in another gear shift. So its like they chose the 0-60 time over using the last gear.
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To be fair, you are using auto. With manual you would just stick to 5th.
But yeah, seems pretty long. I would probably make it “one gear” shorter. Maybe it has stock gearbox?
Can you tell me whose tune it is? Can be via DM if you don’t want to start some “heated discussion”.
Im using manual. But yes these gearshifts do make it seem like im using auto now when i think about it 
My bad. Assumed that by low rpms and long shift time.
I’m sure I have some tunes out there with “bad” gearing that has a specific intended purpose. i would have to know the tuner, the tune name, date, description, etc before fully judging this one, but if final drive was never adjusted it sounds like just laziness
My first question is how much of a difference was made by changing it so the top speed matched redline? And what happened with performance elsewhere? Was it slower or faster in lapping circuits or in sprints?
IMO using the sport trans generally leads to a compromise of some type in gearing. It’s possible that the taller 6th is a result of tuning for a circuit or for some mid speed corners for example.
It’s definitely possible it was missed or they thought it was good enough. It seems like initially when the game was released there was a rush to get tunes out so they would be in the top recommended tunes going forward. It’s possible they don’t want to go back to fix it because they would lose their spot.
Also, Hot Wheels has effects that take advantage of an extra gear or a taller last gear that goes above the normal top speed of a car. I don’t know whether the tune was made prior to the release though.
3 Likes
Unfortunately, this trend seems to continue to some degree with every new car that arrives in the game. Notoriety over quality appears to be the focus in many instances.
5 Likes
That’s not correct. The final drive of the street gearbox is pre-determined and can’t be altered (except as a side effect of camshaft & tire profile size upgrades).
It is different for every engine swap though.
OT: the 6th gear is actually close to spot on. The tune uses the stock engine where the maximum power is quite far off the redline.
You can see in the telemetry the power starts to decline in the end from 332 bhp to 331. Thus, it’s over the power peak already. For racing it could be a little bit shorter because such long straights are rare but seems nearly perfect for freeroam. I would probably make it 0.10 shorter for freeroam and ~ 0.25/0.30 shorter for racing.
6 Likes
I just tested it and you are right. I was able to manipulate the final drive a bit, but only with the camshaft upgrade like you said. Probably the cause of my confusion since it’s one of the things I tend to change when doing a rebuild.
Kinda wish the game let us tune final drive at the differential like in real life, although I get why they don’t. I still barely understand differential tuning when I do it in other games.
What I really wish for is a volume slider for transmission noise. That sport transmission is brutal.
as the engine revs up it hits a peak torque range, you can feel it when you use a single gear where the car accelerates the most. That higher acceleration is because that is the rpm the engine runs most efficiently at. To optimize your top speed vs acceleration, you need to work with this range trying to keep your revs within it as much as you can. When you reach final gear, you should be just within the upper middle bit of this range. Its kindof a feel thing, it takes some trial and error, but but you want your engine to basically do as little work as possible to get you as fast as possible. thats what that range is. Its different for every engine, but fiddle with it a bit youll catch on
And here are my 2 cents.
Tests done at Aeródromo drag strip. Tune used in 1st post is Bard’s purist tune. It uses sport gearbox. All tunes used below can be found by searching “purist”.
| # |
tuner |
A |
M+C |
tune made in |
gear length compared to BARD’s tune |
| 1 |
k1z BARD |
33.77 |
32.63 |
2022 |
|
| 2 |
k1z BALA |
33.65 |
32.64 |
2023 |
longer |
| 3 |
k1z AMEMIYA |
33.64 |
32.62 |
2024 |
longer |
| 4 |
DIOGOSILVA2004 |
33.93 |
32.62 |
2023 |
shorter |
| 5 |
ZOMBIEJESUS52 |
33.88 |
32.54 |
2023 |
shorter |
| 6 |
LOGIKJ |
33.80 |
32.63 |
2024 |
A bit shorter |
| 7 |
my stock gearbox |
33.64 |
32.67 |
|
longer |
| 8 |
my FD 4.40 |
33.88 |
32.62 |
|
A bit shorter |
| 9 |
my FD 4.25 |
33.84 |
32.64 |
|
|
| 10 |
my FD 3.50 |
33.67 |
32.68 |
|
|
| 11 |
my FD 5.20 |
34.00 |
32.62 |
|
|
| 12 |
my race clutch and
gearbox FD 3.90 |
33.61 |
32.78 |
|
|
| 13 |
my race clutch and
gearbox FD 4.40 |
33.76 |
32.71 |
|
|
sidenotes for tunes, mostly stupid 
, you can skip it :
1 - Auto time is skewed because it was changine gear right before finish line
3 - nice wheels 
5 - bigger rear wheels, looks bad
6 - sport susp so you lose four wheel steering
9 - was showing best numbers for accel in tuning menu
11 - 260km/h top speed
13 - gears so short that I reached 9th gear 
extra sidenotes:
-IMO it is best to keep RPMs beetwen 6000 and 7500 (redline is 8000).
-Was comparing only accel, don’t really know which of this tunes drive best.
-Setting up final drive can be tricky, it was basically showing me same numbers for 4.15-4.30 range and for 4.35-4.50 range, so maybe there is some better setup for tune #8 and #9
summary:
Was Bard wrong? Performance wise it looks OK. I would probably go with something shorter.
PS. And another GTR to collection - 4xR34, 3xR33, 5xR32
6 Likes
Its an old tune yes. But its definitely not circuit specific. Not hot wheels.
Bigger rear wheel removes 1 PI. Weird choise because i could definitely fit slightly more power even with steeet tires without relying on this. So its not like it helps the build, it just makes it look worse for no reason.
Ive noticed on some cars you can increase both front and rear wheels and still reduce PI. But sometimes you can only do it just on the rear. Might seem silly but it can help, especially if youre looking to squeeze something in but you don’t want to remove power.
If i was making a tune for everyone to use, i would surely want to set up the final drive properly, right?
I have a challenge for all of you reading & commenting to do a tune check up on your cars. See how many of them actually do what they’re supposed to do or what you thought they were supposed to do. How many of them have this issue? And how many never even reach their top speed or get even close to it?
You might get surprised. Share results if you’d like.
I would say many. I use M+C most of the time, so some of them have terrible launch, because I leave stock gearbox to save PI. Some of them have gears too long. Many of them have 10-speed gearboxes where I just use 6-7-8 of them. And I have at least 2 cars tuned for specific tracks (tunes shared) where gears are too short and it could go quicker, but it justs hits rev limiter (wasn’t bothered to use gearbox with more gears and lengthening highest gear was not optimal for the job). It is all relative I guess 
Besides, isn’t top speed from tuning menu just a calculation of final drive/highest gear ratio and rev limiter of used engine? And later it is limited by how much HP you have + (when you driving) aero drag? No?
2 Likes
I think it’s redline instead of the rev limiter.
That’s why sometimes the car can achieve a higher top speed than shown in the tuning menu when the power/drag limit falls directly into the redline.
Then, redlining the engine produces more power than shifting up and dying in low rpm/power leading to lower speed what the game does to calculate top speed.
The new Sera with the VTEC and the Continental GTC with the 5.2l V10 are recent cars where it’s the case in a racing situation and why these make terrible builds for auto users.
If I find the time I’ll clip it later to show what I mean.
Finding the sweet spots between PI-efficient gearboxes, engines and tires in combination with the intended use (PI class, surface, tracks, auto/m/mc) is really the supreme discipline of car building in Horizon.
That’s why car building in the new Motorsport is so boring. Nearly every car needs race transmission, similar tires and engine swaps. In the end they have no character anymore.
2 Likes
different final drives have different uses
