Tuning Guide for Drifting
The old one seems to have been deleted with the new forum update, so here it is again. This one is slightly different because I didn’t have the most recent version saved onto my computer, but I updated what I could remember.
Choosing Your Car
Generally, any Rear Wheel Drive (RWD) car is capable of drifting. try to avoid Mid-Engine and Rear-Engine cars as the weight distribution will be more towards the rear and it will tend to make the car more grippy. I’m not saying that Mid-Engines and Rear-Engines can’t drift. If you tune them correctly, they can be very effective. (I recall that Killa Kali has a Porsche that drifts very well). Keep in mind that some cars can be converted to RWD after purchasing them.
Upgrades
Platform and Handling- Most people prefer all Race Platform and Handling, but the Weight Reduction, Roll Cage, and Anti-Roll Bars are not required. I would suggest Race everything.
Drivetrain- Race everything
Wheels- Try to avoid using Racing Slicks (they are not allowed in competitions). Stick with Street or sport tire compound. Tire Width- This is personal preference. I personally upgrade the Rear all the way and leave the Front stock so that i get more grip on the rear for speed, but others prefer to have the Front wider than the Rear. Play with it and see what you like. Rims and Rim size are optional and personal preference.
Aspiration-You have the choice of a Single turbo, Twin Turbo, Twin-Screw Supercharger, and a Centrifugal Supercharger. Most people stick with a single turbo, but you may experience something called “Turbo Lag”. What is Turbo Lag? While drifting, the turbo takes a few seconds to spool up. When it finally spools up, it lets out a “boost” of speed. Sometimes the boost of speed can catch you off guard and may cause you to spin out. Some people avoid using turbos for this reason, but if you get used to the “Turbo Lag”, then you can use it to your advantage. i.e. coming out of corners, you can gain a lot of speed from turbo lag.
Performance- The only required part is the flywheel. I recommend using a Sport Flywheel instead of a Race Flywheel. All other parts are optional, but be civil with the horsepower. Most cars can drift with around 400hp. anything over 650hp is not allowed in competitions (this is subject to change).
KEEP IT S CLASS OR LESS! R class cars are not allowed in competition.
Tuning
Tire Pressure:
Tire pressure is measured in PSI Which stands for Pounds per Square Inch. It’s generally accepted that optimal tire grip is achieved at 32psi. Seems easy, right? set the tire pressure to 32psi and you’re done! It’s not that easy though. As your tires heat up, the air inside them also heats up and expands. So in order to have 32psi in your tires while they’re hot, it requires a bit of trial and error. Set your front and rear tire pressure to 28psi and take your car out on your favorite track. After a lap or two, check your PSI by accessing your telemetry and toggling over a few pages. Change your tire pressure accordingly then try it again until your tire pressure is roughly 32 while hot.
Alignment
Camber- Always keep the front and rear camber NEGATIVE! Positive Camber is not allowed in competitions. The more Negative Camber you apply to your car, the more the tops of the tires will angle toward each other.
Diagrams for camber Below (view from the front of the car)
0 Camber ||-------------|| <— those are the tires. lol
Negative Camber /_/--------------_\ <---- Sexy
Positive Camber _--------------/_/ <---- Not sexy
(Special thanks to Gr4phic for the Camber diagrams)
The purpose of Camber is to make as much of the tires touching the pavement as possible while drifting. How do you tune camber? The front camber will generally be anywhere from -4 to -5 and the rear will generally be from -1 to -2. Set your front to -5 and rear to -2 and then drift a couple laps on a track. Watch the replay with telemetry on and toggle over until it shows how much camber you have on your tires. Watch the camber while you drift. You want it to be as close to 0 without going into the positives as possible. If the Rear is constantly at around -.5 while drifting, add a little bit more positive camber (around -1.7) and repeat the process until it stays very close to 0 camber while drifting.
This is a very long process, but it’s worth it.
Toe- Toe is how close or far apart the fronts of the tires are from each other.
More Diagrams (from the top of your car and the car is pointing up ^)
*0 Front Toe || ||<- front tires
|| || ← rear tires
*Positive Toe _\ /_/ ← front tires
|| || <-rear tires
*Negative Toe /_/ _\ ← front tires
|| || ← rear tires
On your car, you want Positive Toe on the front of your car. The more Positive Toe you add, the more angle it allows you to achieve while drifting. However, the more positive toe you have, the slower you will be while drifting
On the rear, you generally want anywhere from 0 to -.5 Toe. I’m not a big fan of toe in the rear, although some people love it. Play around with it and see what you’re comfortable with.
Front Caster- Front caster changes the “Rake” of your front shock tower. Essentially what that means is it tilts the top of your shock backwards or forwards. Imaging standing straight upright: you are at 1 caster. Now lean back as far as you can without falling backwards: You are now at 7 caster. Now apply that to your shock (Some creative imagining) You really can’t go wrong while tuning Caster because it’s a personal preference on how you want your car to handle. The more caster you have, the more stable your car will be, but you give up resposiveness. The opposite is also true. The less caster you have, the more responsive your car will be, but it may also feel twitchy.
More diagrams (your car is pointing -->)
1 caster | <-shock
O ← wheel (terrible diagram)
7 caster \ ← shock
O ← wheel
Sorry for my lack of Diagram-Making Skills
Anti-Roll Bars
Here comes the fun part where Math takes place. Here’s the formula:
(A-B)C+B=X
I’ll break it down for you.
A= the stiffest setting (This will always be 40 if you install Race Anti-Roll Bars)
B= the softest Setting (This will always be 1 if you Install Race Anti-Roll Bars)
C= how much weight is on the front/rear of your vehicle (this can be found by going to your garage and scrolling over your car and pressing the “Y” button)
Here is what you would do for Front Anti-Roll Bars:
You take the stiffest setting (40) and subtract the softest setting (1). Then you take that answer and multiply it by how much weight is on the front of your car. Then you take that answer and add the softest setting (1).
Example: Let’s say you have 52% on the front. You would do…
40-1=39
39 x .52=20.28 (round to 20.3)
20.3=1=21.3
21.3 would be the Front Ant-Roll Bar setting.
For the Rear, you would do the same process, but use 48% instead of 52% because if 52% is on the front, then 48% is on the rear (obviously). So you would do…
40-1=39
39 x .48=18.72 (round to 18.7)
18.7+1=19.7
19.7 would be the Rear Anti-Roll Bar.
I know it seems like a lot of work, but after a while you will memorize the process. The purpose of this is so that your car is perfectly balanced.
Springs
To determine the springs, you do the same formula as the anti-roll bars. (A-B)C+B=X
Keep in mind that the softest and stiffest setting will be different on every car.
Let’s say the stiffest setting was 1000 and your softest was 100 and you had 52% weight on the front.
you would do…
1000-100=900
900 x .52=468 (round to the nearest .5)
468+100=568
568 would be the Front Spring setting.
Rear:
1000-100=900
900 x .48=432
432=100=532
532 would be the Rear Spring setting.
Fine tuning your Suspension
After doing the calculations to find out your Spring Settings, you may find that it doesnt feel right on some tracks. Well this will help you fine tune your car for a specific track.
The tighter you make your Suspension, the less weight will transfer to the sides of your car while drifting. This is ideal for tighter tracks and quick Transitions (a Transition is when you are drifting and you transfer the weight of your car to the other side which causes your drift to change direction). A track that you would want tighter Springs is Tsukuba Short. But watch out because if your springs are too stiff, your car will want to spin out all the time
The softer you make the Suspension, the more weight will transfer to the sides of your car while drifting. This is ideal for High Speed tracks with longer corners and easy Transitions such as Maple Valley or Suzuka. If your springs are too soft, too much weight will tranfer to the out side of your car while drifting which slows you down alot and makes you more likely to stall out.
*Fun Fact-Having a hard time keeping up with people, but you already have 650hp? If you soften the Rear Suspension, it causes more weight to transfer to the rear which gives you more traction. As you probably guessed, more traction = more speed.
Ride Height-
“The Tip: When you go to the ride height, It is always better to have the front end slightly higher than the rear end. The reason so is because you need the extra support for the engine when you brake. (Note: This is for both Mid Engine and Front Engine)
The Reason: When you brake, the car’s mass is shifted from being in the center of the car to the front of the car. You can see this effect happen by looking at the Body Accelerometer when you press “Up” on the D-Pad. So you ask, “Well, why does this have to happen for Mid Engine?” Well, although making a car Mid Engine balances out the center of gravity of the car, when you hit the brake, a Mid Engine car has to deal with the equal amount of body acceleration applied. Therefore, upraising the front end of the car will give the front engines a bit of relief and Mid Engines more stopping power.
Want an Example? Refer to the Top Secret Silvia D-Spec S15. Notice how even without looking at the tuning setup, you can clearly see the front end is much higher than the rear end. It may be different otherwise when you actually look at the tune, but this is how I tune with a bit of science applied ”
Special thanks to IRI GrandFX and CSI Ratava253 for the info in quotes
Rebound Stiffness
You guessed it. Same formula. The Rebound stiffness will always be 12 if you have Race Springs installed. so if my weight was 52% on the front and 48% on the rear, it would go…
12-1=11
11 x .52=5.72 (round to 5.7)
5.7+1=6.7
6.7 would be your Front Rebound stiffness
and for the rear…
12-1=11
11 x .48=5.28 (round to 5.3)
5.3+1=6.3
6.3 would be the Rear Rebound stiffness
Bump Stiffness
Make it anywhere from 50% - 75% of what the Rebound stiffness is. For instance, if your Rebound stiffness was
Front: 6.6
Rear: 6.4
Then make your Bump stiffness
Front: Anywhere from 3.3 to 4.9
Rear: Anywhere from 3.2 to 4.8
Brake Distribution
Brake Distribution is based on personal preference. I find that 45% on the front suits me very well.
Brake Pressure
Again, Brake pressure is based on personal preference. I find that 120% pressure suits me very well
Differentials
“Increasing the acceleration rate of the differential in a rear-wheel-drive vehicle will tend to make more oversteer as you exit a corner, as the wheels lock together and begin to lose traction under acceleration” - JoeGTR
Basically, the more acceleration and deceleration, the more angle you will be able to achieve while drifting. on the other hand, it is much more likely to spin out.
Gearing
Tuning gears is essential to drifting. you have to find the “Money Gear”. This is usually 3rd or 4th gear. Take your car to the track that you want the gears to be tuned on. I recommend using 3rd gear because it is the middle-most gear so you have other gears to shift into in different situations. Put your car in 3rd gear and drift a few corners. If you notice that your car is redlining (bouncing off of the rev limiter) too quickly which is causing you to lose speed, then tune the final drive 3 clicks towards the “speed” setting. This will make all of the gears a little bit longer which will make it redline later. Tune your final drive so that 3rd gear drifts most corners with around 1000rpm’s to spare until it redlines.
Just tuning the final drive doesn’t solve your problem sometimes. if all of your gears are perfect besides one gear, go to that individual gear and tune it. try to avoid going to extremes as it will through off your gearing a lot. for example, if you like your 2nd and 4th gear, but your 3rd gear seems like it bogs down (loses rpm’s) mid-drift, then go to the 3rd gear in tuning setup and tune it about 3 clicks towards acceleration. repeat this process until you are happy with the gears. keep in mind that some cars only have 4 gears and other cars have 5 gears or 6 gears.
Congratulation. You just tuned a drift car.
I’m sure that I am forgetting things here and there and I’m sure that many of you tune differently. This is just a general way to tune your car for beginners and pros alike.
If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment and I will add them in