I’m trying to understand how to set up a car for drifting. I’m trying to get 3 stars on the drift zones.
I trying to tune a Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT Apex. I have the HP maxed out, and all the fully adjustable parts. Getting real wheel spin isn’t a problem 
Holding a drift is what I’m finding hard to tune for. I do understand turning the assists off, being careful with the throttle, etc. What Im truing to understand is if I can get rid of this sort of ‘sticktion’ where the either wants to straighten back out or the car starts to move forward rather than sideways (while the rear wheels are still spinning).
Are there some general guidelines for spring rates, alignment, dampness, anti-roll bars, and differential settings?
For example, I’m trying to set my diff settings to 100% for a full time locked diff to try and help keep my rear wheels spinning in a drift. I’ve set my anti-roll bars to the min at the rear and to the max in the front. Assuming my inside tire will lift in the front, I’m trying to set a bit of toe out to guide the car better once the drift has caused the weight to shift.
I haven’t been able to figure out if camber does anything for me.
can canning the brake balance get me anything when it comes to drifting?
After much tinkering, here is what I have found. Toe in and out destabilize the car a lot. When you do get the weight shifted the right way, they can help you hang onto the drift longer. Rear toe out seemed to be greatest effect but it worked best with a softer anti-roll bar setting. And it was really hard to get the car to go in a straight line.
So 0 toe all around seems best to me.
Camber didn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference one way or another. Maybe more skillful drivers find it useful but I was able to achieve 3 stars on a couple zones with 0 camber of any kind
The things that made the biggest difference were anti-roll bars, spring rates, tires sizes, tire pressure, and tire compound.
I stick with the stock tire compound. I wish I could have different front and rear, but since I can’t, I put bigger tires up front and went with skinny on the rear.
I made the rear much stiffer than the front both in spring rates and in anti-roll bars.
With the stock tire compound, I de-tuned the engine. Basically all I did was the engine swap. There is plenty of horsepower to spin the stock tires and I think the lower HP meant a less sensitive throttle which I found easier to control (very slight trigger motion didn’t have an great of an effect so it was harder to give too much throttle).
Then I just messed with the tire pressure seeing what I could mange with that. It was hard for me to really tell since it was pretty difficult to be that precise while drifting (though I do now have many lucky escapes logged 
).
I think luck played a pretty big role in the drift zones I’ve gotten 3 stars in so far. Getting entry into the zone right so you are already getting a little sideways, getting the entry to the first big corner right, not having traffic to mess up your line or hit were all big factors.
And nothing will teach throttle control like trying to get one of these drift machines moving, and moving in a straight line
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If you’re still struggling, I find setting a private game and just playing helps.
I got given a bit of advice a while ago about the no assists and camber changes etc bit since gone on to learn a little more and tuned a few cars that I can comfortably play in the car park or even just tour the streets sideways.
Some of the cars I’ve tuned are high HP so I’m still getting used to the right throttle control etc but that’s where the private games come in handy, no one stressing if you hit them, seems to be fewer cars on the street as well and you can keep switching into tuning and make a few changes, all trail and error and the telemetry comes in handy at times. I generally never let my rear camber pass -2, rear toe -0.5, tire pressures are around 28psi on the rear, fronts always higher I use stiff suspension parts to avoid so Much body roll, rear tires bigger than the front, ride height as low as possible to keep the centre of gravity down, helps with control…
Wouldn’t say I’m a good drifter but feel I’ve done quite well teaching myself a few tunes, got a comfortable Silvia, rx7 and m3 which are high powered, still tweaking a skyline which I just can’t seem to get just right yet and also an m4 which kinda messed up when I added more power but seems to be a gearing issue as I can’t find a good “sweet” spot
Horse power is not the way to go. I’d balance the cars weight at 54% front to rear, get race springs roll bars and breaks. Race transmission race diff upgrade rim size to 16 inches get lighter rim street clutch drive shaft and fly wheel and star from there. Upgrading the cam first will help out a lot with your power band in drifts. When you finally figure out what class you want it in (s1,a,b,c) start turning it. Your spring pressure you want to start off ballanced with your cars static weight. Look it up. From there I’d recommend reducing your roll bars dampening and differential all the way to the left. This will give you the most body roll out of your roll bars, the most response out of your springs( they will move too fast so it will be bumpy) and the biggest gap your differential(you will turn hard and fast, donuts in ribbons). Start from there and work on bump dampening one end at a time until your car crushes into the suspension a bit more slowly(3 front 3.4 rear minimum, so front springs get loaded under acceleration(this will give grip to front tires in oversteer)). Once you found bump dampening work on rebound until the end of that car come back up from the raod more controllably. You want your front rebound higher than your rear(to load them under acceleration and give grip to front tires in oversteer) but not too much of a difference between the front rebound and rear bump and rear rebound setting this will make it the front end not push back up during hard breaking and cause you to slide forward. The rebound setting makes that end of the car lift up faster or slower. The bump dampening setting makes that end of the car crush/ squat faster or slower depending on the setting. Stiffer is slower softer is faster. After you have a decent dampening setting start working on the differential. Increasing the diff setting increases power to the inside wheel of the car when it breaks traction during a turn.(if your accelerating straight which ever wheel breaks traction first then is considered the inside wheel in this case. A higher setting will make the car push on that wheel causing it to match the other wheels speed at a quicker rate than a lower setting. I would recommend not having more than a 40% difference between your accel and decrep settings for most grip until you know what you are doing. If you want to feel the difference between understeer and over steer from loss of grip try have accel and deccel on same settings start at zero and slowly increase them both equally until you have found a drivable accel setting. Having a lower deccel setting will give the car a bit more oversteer on that end of the differential when you let go of the gas incase you need a lil more oversteer when you ease on the gas deep in the corner and can’t get it from your springs or just want to scrub off some speed with the diffe and save your tires from more breaking forces.) the Accel setting is working when tye rev limiter is climbing. The deceleration setting works when the rev limiter is dropping back down to zero. This is where engine response comes into play. Upgrading cams will increase how high your rev limiter can go and could mean the difference between switching gears during the apex of a turn and losing grip to weight transfer and banging one gear at a solid angle the whole way through a turn. Clutch upgrades decrease the amount of time you have to wait for the gears to catch and deliver power to the wheels Drive shaft upgrade decrease the amount of time it takes for the drive shaft Rpms to increase and decrease. A heavy drive shaft with a bigger lighter rim will make your car feel more tourqey. You can disengage this component from the flywheel by holding the clutch and then your cars weigh tires angle and differential will slowly slow it down. The heavier the shaft the harder it is to slow down. Not to mention a few more pounds you have to carry at 1 g around corners and stop at any given notice. So the right shaft for the right build. Your fly wheele works in the same way but is between your Cutch and engine. Any thing that moves in your engine will work the same way and affect the fly wheel clutch shaft diff rims then finally tires. All of these components in addition to your cars wieght tourque and power will affect response. Chose wisely you don’t want to end up in s1 racing 900hp r34’s for their money Your Toyota. Keep it a class max. Unless you have some custom over the top Funtime drift build or drag build. Once you got the power going to the differential the way you want it( a good accel settIng atleast). It’s time to start reducing unnecessary body roll by tightening up the roll bars one end at a time. This will tie the left wheel to the right. The stiffer the roll bar the stronger the effect one wheel has over the other. This is where all of your race parts come together, the roll bars. Let’s work on front. In a drift build the front roll bar is a must. With a low bump dampening and high rebound dampening and decent pressure in your rear springs it can stick the front of your car to the ground like glue. When that happens open up the tellemitry( turn Anna off in control options then hold down on the d pad in game) hit left until you can see tire heat. Inner mid and outer temps. Start hitting corners as hard as you can and watch the out system side and inner temps. You goal is to make left and right even for optimal grip. If the outside on both are left and right tires are hotter than the inside while you are going in a straight line they are not laying flat from accelerating forces and need a bump of negative chambering to lay flat turn and stop better. Negative chambering will lift the out side of both tires and lower the inside. Once they are gripping better it’s time to tighten up that butt(rear end of the car) here’s where you get your speed and your over steer your need for your drift build but all that work we did to the front end was a platform for the rear to build off of. Now do as many 0- 100 pulls with out much turning and watch your rear tire temperatures in the tellemitry. If the out sides of the left and right rear tire are hotter than their inner it needs a bump of negative chambering to grip more and help you not spin out. Try to get the temps as close as possible under acceleration with negative chambering don’t over do it or you will lose grip it’s a no no in the rear. Also the rear tires are under a rotational force and will toe out during acceleration I’d recommend atleast -0.1 degree of toe in for more grip. But more than -0.3 toe is will start to slow your car down from tire scrub. If you want to see what alignment does watch the friction screen when your holding an turn in your tellemitry menu. The direction the lines are going are the direction those tires are pushing the force. The size of the circle is the amount of tire on the ground and the colors represent how close they are to loseing grip. Now it’s time to start drifting and get a feel for your power band wieght breaks and tires. I’d recommend finding a gear calculator for gear ratios. Look for one that has an input for the tire driven by power. It should ask you for rim size tire width tire radial max torque max torque rpm red line rpm and the number of gears your transmission has. Input your information use the raito it gives you then just adjust the final drive for accelerations or top speed. Now go find a good figure 8 loop some where and start tuning your spring pressure again. More pressure transfers the wieght faster and harder unlike dampening and will greatly affect understeer over steer. You want to increase your rear springs to transfer more wieght to the front under acceleration and turning but not so much as to start spinning out uncontrollably or turning too hard just enough to keep enough pressure on the front. Higher pressure spring might need a stiffer roller bar and stiffer rebound dampening to keep that end of the car more stable as it goes under pressure from the streets of driving. Now ride Hight play a factor in which eight transfer too before I get my base dampening settings I try to find a good base ride height. A higher center of gravity will transfer wieght faster and more violently. Lowering your car can stable it out quick but hinder its ability to turn in. Angle is key. You want the nose of the car to squat befoe the rear under acceleration during the and apex of the turn. This ensures the tires turning the car are loaded with wieght and have grip. Having the rear slightly higher then the front can help keep the wieght on the front tires at all times aiding in over steer. Over do it and your rear tires won’t grip and you’ll spin out while your front never recovers from a squat to shift wieght to the rear for traction. You can use the g force hud and spring hud to help tune ride hidth and see what effect your setting changes had on the car. I’m getting tired if any of this helped you and you want me to finish my lecture you can inbox me but I’m done for now.
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