Tuning Camber and Caster angles have been a bit of a mystery for me but I think I’ve finally figured it out. If I’ve got this wrong, please let me know. If this is correct, I hope it helps other people struggling through their tunes.
Here is what that means for me and how I tune my cars.
Step #1 Flash tune and drive
Step #2 Tune suspension to be as soft as possible and still maintain precision (soft = more grip)
Step #3 Tune ARBs for the appropriate amount of over-steer and under-steer
Step #4 Tune Brakes for proper turn in, front end grip and sensitivity
Step #5 Tune differential for mid corner (deceleration) and exit (Acceleration) over-steer
Step #6 Tune Camber (Finally)
Step #7 Tune Caster (Finally Final)
Tuning camber is just about the last thing I do, once the rest of the suspension is set. I head out to the airfield with the massive skid pad where I can turn constantly at different speeds usually 2nd and 3rd gear and monitor tire temperatures. The goal is to make sure your tires are heating evenly during the turn. Adding Camber will increase the amount of heat on the inside of the tire and decrease the heat on the outside. Run circles at different speeds adjusting Camber until you find a sweet spot where both your front and rear tires maintain constant temps.
Next we tune Caster. Caster will make sure with all that camber we added for turning does not screw up straight line grip. I stick with the airfield and run long straights around the outside. Again the goal is to tweak the castor angle until the tires are running similar temps across the tires. I don’t get these as close to even as I do temps in corners, but I make sure nothing crazy is going on in the straights. I try to keep the inside of the tire 2 or 3 degrees higher than the outside. The rears should be close as possible for maximum straight line grip.
Once set, you are ready to race. Remember, if you change your suspension, go back and make sure the camber and caster are adjusted.
This is what I’ve started doing and I’m pretty happy with the results. If anyone has better ideas or thinks I’ve got it wrong, let me know. I’m still learning!
Ive never really delved that far into it as i tune by feel 99% of the time but you definitely have me interested with this method. Gonna try it out on one of my tunes and see how it works. Good post!
My reasoning is after flash tune this will fix most corner in and corner out issues.
I tune camber next and pay no attention to telemetry because I know there are some cars that excel with -3.5 camber and others with less than 1.
I don’t touch caster unless I feel a skittish feeling when accelerating out a corner. I then either move to 4.0 or 6.0 and work down/up until it feels ok.
I tune brake balance last. I view it as a fine tuning measure only and thru trial and error realized camber, caster, springs, ride height, and diff were not the issue.
@Mirn76 I’ve used this method in the past and it works extremely well when setting up a well balanced base tune. One problem though, this method isn’t universal when it comes to proper camber settings for tracks. This is because there are multiple tracks that have effect on both positive and negative camber, to name a couple, Road Atlanta and Spa. Any time you have a turn that’s over a crest you’re going to have crazy things going on with your tires and tuning camber to these situations can only be done on the track. Just remember to watch the tire-temperature across the tire and not the camber angle in the turns when tuning.
Very good article though this will teach people at the very least how camber and caster work.
Good work man and keep up with the tuning it makes this game seriously fun!
Great points. So how do you tune for tracks like Road Atlanta and Spa differently? Do you use track specific tunes or do you alter a base tune to account for turns over a crest?
Won’t the changes you make to ARBs and Damping change your Caster / Camber settings? That’s why I’ve been tuning them last.
I’ve not done any tuning with tires, I set them to 28 and leave them be. Are your dropping rear tire pressure for more exit grip? What min/max range for tire pressure generally works for you?
Not really no, I set my camber while the car is on a level surface and change the caster so on full lock the inside tyre is flat on the ground or has a bit of positive camber… That gives a strong set up for 9/10 tracks. Your camber changes dynamically with the weight transfer and the surface gradient you’re racing on. All I use the ARBs for is to determine how much the body rolls onto the outside tyres. Too much roll you’ll unload the inside and loose traction and grip, too little roll you don’t utilise the full width of the tire and again loose traction.
I set my tyres on the soft side generally speaking. reason being added traction, it allows you to take that extra 1 or 2 mph through to the exit and accelerate earlier and hard without the rear getting loose.
Tire temperature on a regular circuit seems to be the best way to tune Camber.
I check several telemetries. I check tire temperature mid turn to make sure the outside is getting some heat love. I check the camber telemetry. I don’t care if the camber suddenly turns positive a little. That will happen if you ride 2 wheels on the curb anyway. What I care about is if mid-turn you have MORE than +1.0 degree camber. You need to add at least -0.5 and retest.
I typically run higher Castor angles. I used to always use 7.0 Castor. A street Corvette has 6.0 Castor and Race cars will go up to 9.0. So don’t pay the warning any mind. HOWEVER I feel like 7.0 Castor is probably booby trapped :). So I typically use something in the 6.X range. Castor fixes the excessive positive camber of the inside turning wheel. Seems minor, but hey, its extra grip. Castor should theoretically push back the contact patch and give you stability at high speed, and difficult turn-in (which is usually a weight shift problem 99% of the time anyway).
The end results end up being that the rear is commonly between -1.0 and -0.6. The front can vary wildly by car. But commonly you see -1.5 to -1.7. I’ve ended up using something like -2.5 on the front of the Trueno and greatly increased my grip. I used to be more scared of high camber angles in Forza 4. But in Forza 6 it doesn’t seem as detrimental. Still… I try to stay conservative. In Forza 4 going past -1.0 in the front was typically madness :).
I’m with the above suggestion, that you’re doing this backwards. Tune camber first. Yes, changes to everything else might mean that you many need to go back and tweak it .1 degree or so to further maximize it, but you’re never getting max grip without camber being right, throwing the rest of your tuning off. It’s easy to set camber to exactly what it should be, for a given car and build. The telemetry tells you what it needs to be. Shoot for about -0.25 on front and rear OUTSIDE tires, during max G loading (long, high speed turns). This will allow it to never go positive on a flat surface (hitting a curb will throw that off), and get you as close to zero on that outside tire as possible, which will give you max grip.
Once your camber is set, than tune other things - I suggest starting with springs to eliminate dive and rise under braking/accel, then moving onto ARB’s, etc. Once your tune is “done” then check your telemetry. Your final tune may have pushed the suspension harder and obtained more grip, which might mean you need to change camber by .1 or so.
I don’t think it much matters what you go for first as long as you understand that you’ll probably have to go back and fine tune it.
Usually I aim for a 0 degrees of camber in a steady state corner, adding more or less depending on the balance of heat across the tire. Roll rate (springs + ARBs) are going to dictate where the static camber is set.
It also really depends on the car. It looks like the developers have given different cars different suspension geometries. For example, a MacPherson strut car typically needs a higher amount of negative camber because camber swings towards the positive as the suspension compresses and the body rolls. Double wishbone cars tend to maintain negative camber or even pick up more.
JackRabbitOne. You have a good starting method into tuning a car for a baseline tune. In all honesty, you can tune a car in this game the same way you would in a real life situation but, there is a major downside to this game. Even though is considered a simulation, the game is nowhere near that of a realistic sim. In terms of graphics it is pretty realistic. In terms of tuning not so much. I am pretty sure you have been playing this long enough to notice that, the tunes you make in FM7 would shatter a cars suspension in real life to pieces. I stopped sweating in circuit racing for that reason alone. It does not give me that realistic feel that I expected it to have. Considering how long Turn 10 has been developing the Forza Motorsports Franchise, to still have this kind of tuning physics in the game is a bit of a let down. Aside from everything else though, you do have the correct process of making a tune. Alignment is the last thing you want to touch in a tune since the cars camber changes depending on the suspension settings. Also, remember that ARB is not only used to control understeer and oversteer. The ARB has a huge affect on how the damping affects your suspension mid corner, especially when hitting bumps. I wish you the best of luck in the whole tuning for FM7. Be prepared for the headaches that will come with it.
Also, for future tunes I recommend you start off with 0.0 front and rear camber with 0.0 toe and 3.5 front caster angle on every tune before you start adjusting suspension settings. Only reason why I say this is because, starting out with your alignment like this, puts all four of your tires flat on the pavement.