TOE?

Why do so many people not bother with it?

What’s so drastically wrong with toe. Surely a 1-13/13-1 setup has a more detrimental effect to the car than just a tiny bit of toe to help turn in?

this is one of the settings that is one of the user preference, i have been tuning since mid 2008 and on my circuit cars ive never ran any front toe , but on the rear a max of -.5 toe which i borrowed off the c5r corvette in fm2 that small amount of rear toe helped calm down the over powered cars i was building then.

i know in drifting in this game the toe settings can look like this front : +2.7 rear +1.0 which seems crazy but with the (well now normal) -3.0/-2.5 camber on f/r cars hold drifts longer and its easier to flick them into the turns.

i have messed around with toe settings again in fm5 and still have not found any dramatic gains in lap times , but this could be driver error on my part

Agreed,

Very small toe adjustments (at the front especially) go a long way but they should be used in moderation.

Yeah front adjustments are good and I only use .1 or .2 and always add them at the end of a tune if I think it needs that little extra turn in

Thanks

Good reply Mech. I personally like to use a little Toe out on front if I am happy everywhere else on the car but just want an extra bit of turn in. I have been avoiding it though recently only because others do but I do feel the benefits when I do use it sparingly. Lap times dont change much but obtain a consistent laptime is easier(slightly)

Thank you

I use it on FWD and AWD tunes but not RWD

Same for me, only fwd and awd

My experience has been that front toe slows your laptime a little. If it helps enough with problematic turn in that can be balanced out. Some rear toe once in a while on an overpowered RWD can help settle it down as mentioned above, but you can often get the same result by twiddling something else instead. Some people like front toe on FWD because they feel it helps turn in, but this is usually because they have the front ARB and/or springs too soft in the first place. On AWD it can be an extreme but effective measure when the sucker just doesn’t want to rotate. Some people say toe is bad, some people love it. Personally, I try to avoid it unless it’s the last tool left in the box.

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I agree with WearyMick.

My first version tunes always have zero toe for RWD cars. I always try to avoid using it. But recently I have used it to good effect.

The reason why I try not to use it is because even at low values you can see the negative impacts of it. I have a 2013 Viper that I was asked to tune for Road Atlanta (my favorite track to run and tune at).

I was trying to get the turn in I wanted and did try front toe of 0.1. It helped the entry to the back straight but made the braking zone a little hairy. I thought I was going nuts thinking 0.1 toe had made it unstable in the braking zone but after testing it that is my conclusion. I did end up keeping the 0.1 toe and tried a different angle through the slight kink and have done ok (just outside top 100 at the moment).

In X class I recently hotlapped every track. The last track where I had not set a time I was happy with was Spa. I was using zero toe initially. The spot that was costing me time was the final chicane. I ended up adding some +ve toe and cut 0.5 from my time which helped me sneak into the top 100.

In the current rivals event at Indy GP I am resisting jumping in the F50. I am using the McLaren F1. I wanted to stabilise the car in the final turn but keep the turn in I was getting on the slower turns. I added +ve toe and backed off turn in elsewhere in the tune. This had the desired effect. I am the 3rd ranked F1 behind Raceboy and Jawshe. Sadly the margin is 0.8 but the toe adjustment did help me.

So in short I try not to use it but it can be useful sometimes (in certain circumstances). You just need to test if the negative effects outway the positives.

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I don’t typically use it as it does slow the car down on long straights. At LeMans, any toe will reduce the top speed.

Rear toe is optional if the car has aggressive torque but not really necessary with careful throttle control.

Front toe I try to avoid unless I have issues with FWD. Got to keep in mind that cars already have Ackerman steering geometry that turns inside wheel more than the outside (i.e. most cars will have inherent toe out in cornering by steering geometry).

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Nothing is faster than straight line 0.0 toe. You can find the turn in you want elsewhere in the tune.

Yup!

how’d you go about it ? Toes the easy way, i think in some cases it helps stabilise the issue better than having a stupid soft/hard car. Just my two cents.

The way i think about anything is weird but for toe its this.

  • toe gives grip to the outside wheel
  • toe gives grip to inside wheel.

Tune so that you delay the lack of grip longer = more grip.

If you need to use toe to assist turn-in then you probably don’t have the car balanced in the first place, so you are really losing out twice. Except in some extreme cases, toe is just papering over cracks. Fix the problem where it is - in your spring rates, arbs, tyres, diff etc. Whatever is impeding turn-in is probably slowing you down elsewhere as well.

Absolute rubbish …toe in or out isnt hiding anything infact if your not using at least a bit of toe -or+ your going to be slower simple…Toe gives faster turn in …faster direction change …agility…stability etc etc etc…the only way to be fast is to be loose fact!!! and settin up a car that is stable n slow to react will get u nowhere in a hurry…No toe = ive seen the titanic turn quicker…lol

If your car won’t turn in without toe it has a problem. Fact. You apparently like toe. If you want to use toe to add more extra better turn or keep the rear planted, then good luck to you. Actually, no, use more toe. Your times are too fast as they stand.

Aren’t faster times the whole point? I have basically been in the camp of not using toe until recently. I don’t know if my mindset has changed or not yet, but I am reconsidering it at least. I have a couple of cars now with a decent amount of toe on them. What little they are slowed down by the toe in the straights, is more than made up on the turns. As a whole, my lap times are WAY faster now and that’s all that matters to me. I went from #69 to #13 on one leaderboard, and from about #200 to #27 on another. The only significant change in the car was the toe. Its almost impossible to argue with someone who’s times are as impressive as Simmo’s. Chase his ghost around any track (I’ve been doing it a lot lately… can get close, but can’t beat him though) and you’ll figure out very quickly where he is beating you. He is no faster on the straights, but he flies through the turns.

Use are both right but WearyMick is completely correct! Toe actually shouldn’t be used unless needed. If you want faster turn in reaction decrease the front spring and/or increase rear spring. If you want more stability, mess around the the overall stiffness of the springs or mess around with the damping etc… Toe just scrubs off time! If it didn’t, why don’t we all run like 2.0 front to?
Well, the wheels start to scrub against the road and you start loosing time.
Basically as I said, only use it if necessary!!
RR

Both arguments seem solid and reasonable to me but has anybody ran the same set up w/ and w/out toe as comparison?