Aim for 220-230 in this game on tire temp. Will amend the guide, thanks for pointing it out. I believe pressure is more important. Generally want 33 when hot.
2 Likes
I was trying everything last night and honestly its extremely difficult to get your tires not to be 230. In every case after a few laps they would always end up that temp, even on extreme tunes like jelly cars etc…
I have spent a long time tuning in Forza 5 and wanted to throw in my feedback in what I have learned. I am confident I can produce a good car, not the best. But solid enough to get the most out of the car. I only tune A class cars and enjoy trying to get older cars to compete against Ferraris. I have been told that unlike previous Forza games the stock car does matter. The F50 is simply a faster car than a Lotus Elan, no matter how good you are at tuning some cars simply can not score fastest times. I enjoy taking underdog cars to achieving the highest results possible.
If your interested in checking out some of my tunes I have a popular Lotus Elan AWD and a nice Nissan Fairlady Z RWD. I try and keep my older tunes up to date with new things that I learn as I get better.
To help others here is how I go about tuning.
EDIT: THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED BASED ON FEEDBACK TO AVOID CONFUSION!
UPGRADING
-
CAR - Find the car you want to tune, the only prerequisite is that it must be lower than S701, buy it and make sure your in it.
-
ENGINE - Convert to RWD (AWD tuning can be slightly different and to avoid confusion this tutorial is for RWD). Look for an engine that will allow you to achieve A700, if its an older car often your stock engine won’t allow you to reach A700. In terms of aspiration I typically use Turbo’s for high speed builds, I avoid others as I haven’t experimented with them yet. Another note is when choosing an engine I look for one that achieve a 50/50 weight ratio. Just to help balance the car out a little more. This can sometimes impact my engine decision. Remember the engines often have different gear ratios, if your using a custom Gear Box this won’t be an issue. When choosing an engine for a RWD car I often look for low torque and high RPM, I personally find to much torque will simply spin up your rear tires more easily. Its not the end of the world, but sometimes lower torque and higher RPM can help with smoother acceleration. I recommend experimenting yourself.
-
TIRES - You want the softest circuit racing tire, make sure not to accidentally get drag tires. You want to widen the tires as much as you need, its best to get the highest and only work backwards if you really feel like you want to drop grip and get extra horse power. I don’t know much about the effects of Rim Size, but I believe Forza 5 has tire roll. With this in mind I simply aim for a sidewall that looks about the right size based on what you would expect in racing series. Its difficult to judge, but I believe a lower pressure high side wall tire will roll more. The same goes for a thin side wall wide tire which won’t roll at all. As a note, older smaller cars can often have thin limits on tire width. In some cases these cars perform better as AWD. If you haven’t got the tire width to properly put the power down your in a losing battle from the start. Remember your build an A class car, there are limitations to older or none racing built cars. I recommend trying it and see, if it doesn’t work switch to AWD.
-
PLATFORM - You want to upgrade all your springs, roll bars, clutch (if you use automatic) etc… The only two to be cautious of are Gear Box and Weight Reduction. If your car already has a high Lateral G you can get away without losing to much weight. If your car already has a good gearbox you can save a few points by getting the second best without changing ratios. I personally avoid changing gear ratios if they are not causing me problems. I only reduce the weight in a car if it feels heavy or has bad handling. Often a car that’s to light and has to much power can be difficult to accelerate. You then need to compensate with down force. This adds to your cars points when it could be spent on more power.
-
AERO - If your using an old car I can almost guarantee your going to need a rear spoiler and most likely a front splitter also. Older cars can be difficult to achieve high laternal G and in some cases limitations shoe horn cars into more focused top speed builds. Remember not to fall into the trap of adding AERO to modern super cars. In some cases they really don’t need it for A class. Your modern Ferrari, Zonda, Lambo etc… really don’t need a front splitter and often not even a rear spoiler. Remember this very much depends on the track. Aero does help with braking and acceleration grip, but your car can very easily feel to heavy and sluggish when you simply might not need it with better mechanical grip setup. Good examples of not needing Aero are the Ford GT and F50.
-
ENGINE UPGRADES - This is pretty simple, always get Camshaft to increase RPM. I have been told not to do this but I personally have always found it to be a massive benefit for the cost, The next is Exhaust and Air Filter in that priority order. If you have Turbo’s and want a high speed build that should be high on your list also. I recommend asking for more opinions from this point onwards. But it isn’t the end of the world if its not 100% optimal.
-
EXTRAS - Everything else is gravy, this is typically more engine upgrades, more aero, less weight etc… Remember, don’t expect this to be your final setup. Its simply a first pass, in some cases you might have not put AERO on to see how far you can get with mechanical grip. Based on the track you might swiftly realise you need it. Its all about balancing what you hope to achieve from the car and your personal tastes of cornering and high speed. Remember when upgrading your vehicle keep an eye on that weight % as it tells you front to rear balance. Make sure you influence your choices to try and achieve a 50/50 result, but only if possible. This is influenced by engine choice and weight reduction.
TUNING
-
TRACK - I tune all my cars on Indianapolis Full, the reason for this is the majority of the track is flat which helps set up tire cambers at low speed, but it also has a sweeping highly cambered corner at the end to test high speed cornering. I find the straight to be average, so if your looking for a car setup you can use in lobby without switching builds aim to top end on the straight. The track is also pretty quick to get around which gives you a better indication of if you have made improvements.
-
BASE WORK - Set tyre pressures to 28, drop your car height as low as it can go. Then drive around for three laps with your debug window displaying camber and temperatures. You need to pay attention at this point and keep your eye on your outside front and rear tires when cornering, make a mental note of there peak positive or negative camber as you will be changing this shortly.
Once your tires are warm check your tire pressures and make the adjustment you need to hit 33 PSI. Your pressures will not change instantly, so after your adjustment give it half a lap to see the effects of your change. This is a good base to start working. I recommend continuing through your tuning until you feel you can’t get any better. Then adjust your tire pressure to see the influence. Based on that make a choice of what pressure you want. Some people prefer 32 others prefer 35.
Continue to drive around, when on the flat areas of the track look at your rear outside wheel camber when cornering, then compensate. You should be looking to peak at 0.0 degrees camber when accelerating out of corners. This can be tricky to get right as the numbers bounce around a lot. The information tells you that the contact patch of your tire is firmly planted to the ground. This helps massively with rear wheel traction when accelerating out of corners. Do the same for your front wheels then expect to add 0.5+ degrees extra, the best corner to test front wheel camber is the last corner of Indianapolis as that’s where your camber is most effective. Remember this is personal choice, get your car to a solid place and go back to this value and experiment. Find out what works for the car and track.
-
MISC - At this point your car should feel much better than it did to begin with and this alone can make a car a few seconds a lap faster. At this point you could be experiencing two common issues. When going around the final corner your car is bottoming out, refer to Worms recommendations to make sure this doesn’t happen. Also be careful you don’t have a higher front over rear. I don’t think I have ever seen a race car like this so probably a good recommendation. Most cars will have higher rear to front. The other problem is your differential. Its very rare to find a car that doesn’t have RWD traction issues because of the default 75% differential (once its upgraded). This is almost guaranteed to happen in older cars. If I’m driving an older car or none super car I normally anticipate this issue and drop it down to 27%. I only increase it if I’m not having traction issues. This is extremely important as often people confuse differential issues with spring and damper settings.
-
SPRINGS, ROLLBARS, AERO, DAMPERS - I recommend referring to Worm’s tutorial for this as its a great break down, a lot of the choices you make will be personal. I like cars with a little bit of overstreer to help with cornering.
2 Likes
Sorry, this is IMHO the opposite. As well in real races like in Forza 5. Every F50 I saw in the Top 10 leaderboards had a rear wing and especially this cars suck without. Yes, they “feel” different, like you have to much luggage in the trunk, but handling is so much better and the lap times as well. The downforce is the main setting to compensate the low handling rates this cars have compare to cars like the KTM-X-Bow. In real races it’s the same. Higher classes have always rear wings. In low classes it’s not allowed or not necessary, but in Forza it seems always be a wise choice.
[/quote]
I don’t really ever upgrade or tune in that manner. I know you took a lot of time to do it but it’s just not right in a lot of cases. I do appreciate the effort and I’m sure a lot of others do as well.
- You need to use cams last
- Superchargers are generally superior
- Most of the engine swaps are good
- Larger front tires in a RWD car will NEVER make you understeer. You will always get more turn in and rotation.
- Upgrading rim size is beneficial in quite a few cars
- You need aero in most cases
- Never use a clutch
- Never use a flywheel
- Never use a flywheel
- Never use a flywheel
- Never use a flywheel
- YOUR TUNES SHOULD BE TRACK SPECIFIC
- A low ride height isn’t always best, some require even ride height, some max, some max front/min rear
- 32 PSI is the minimum. Should be 33-35 IMO
- Camber should be high…REAAAAALLY HIGH. Above 2.0, sometimes double that.
5 Likes
- Never use a clutch
- Never use a flywheel
- Never use a flywheel
- Never use a flywheel
- Never use a flywheel
I’m getting mixed signals here, Worm, are you saying that I should run out and by
the most expensive clutches and flywheels for all the cars in my garage??!! Is this
reverse psychology? I can never tell with you!!
toodles
Hi worm
Are those nevers based on using a race wheel or do they take something away from the cars performance in general??
Thanks for the feedback Worm. I’m still learning each day, I will try the stuff you mentioned and see if it helps. Also did you recommend not upgrading clutch because you use manual?
In reference to the engine if you look at the mapping without a fully custom gearbox it helps give you an idea why I said some are for drag, circuit etc…
As for the understeer from front tires, I’m not sure where I picked that up. I thought it was a tooltip but after looking its not there. Was that ever an issue in Forza 3 or 4? Anyway, good to know my builds can benefit from wider tires.
Has anyone done a beginner guide to tuning? This guide has blown my fragile little mind haha. I’m sure it makes more sense to those with a bit of tuning experience but for me just trying to figure out a starting point for tuning my first car I’m just totally confused. IchII3D your tips seemed good even though some mistakes. I might start out with some of your recommendations for tuning. I’ve put off trying to tune a car cause its all just a bit overwhelming.
1 Like
Set everything to even. Roll bars front and back even, springs the same, etc
If it understeers the front is too stiff
If it oversteers the back is too stiff
If it skids and slides it is too stiff overall
If it feels like a boat your rebound is too low
Take that, play, play, and play some more. Learn one area of the car at a time when you are playing. When you have a grasp of roll bars move to springs and learn it. Just keep playing with stuff.
7 Likes
Prepare yourself for a 2 hour test drive lol
1 Like
Reminds me when I first started recording engineering, I asked the guy"how do you get that great sound?", and he said, I don’t know, I just turn the knobs until it sounds good! LOL
It could help you get started but Worm had a lot of good points about potential issues. His break down of over and understeer is very useful. It will take you a while to get used to knowing what to look for. Personally I race and tune using the cockpit view as it gives you a much better feel of what the car is actually doing.
It certainly can be,maybe try just getting out there and driving the car to get a sense of feel for it.Then try applying one of the base tunes as a starting pt and see what differences you notice. (you will need to install/upgrade springs ,brakes ,diff. etc. before any changes can be made) It might be helpful to look into what each part actually does in order to make the necessary changes, it does no good to know exactly how a car drives if your unable to translate that info into making fixes for it.Then ( possibly w/ the use of the “cause & effect” guide in this thread ) try minor adjustments to one part of the car at a time and or just experiment and see what seems to work for you.It really just comes down to time and experience , you can read a million guides and threads but if your mind doesnt have any thing to relate that knowledge to your no better off. Good luck & keep asking questions 
(Big thank you to everyone that takes the time to post these type guides as theyre very helpful and greatly appreciated)
I updated the guide I put together to remove some of the confusion with things I clearly got wrong or came across as fact when mentioning them. Again its all about personal preference and its simply another opinion of how I go about tuning. I’m very casual, I don’t tune per track but instead like nice solid lobby cars I can enjoy without hassle. They aren’t the fastest track for track but simply a more relaxed approach to tuning.
1 Like
I am an average tuner / driver looking to take the next step to the next level. There is allot of information to absorb here but after 2 reads, it makes more sense.
I hope to now be able to get to the level of posting some reasonably fast tunes in the future.
Thank you for taking the time to post all of this information.
1 Like
Worm, this was incredibly informative. Thank you for posting.
I did notice I cannot get a certain spring rate no matter what I do and that specific spring rate my buddy has but I cannot get it, even after tweaking on 3 of the same cars. Interesting.
Ok so advice in hand I made my first attempt at tuning a car. I tried a grip tune. I learnt a lot but it was a terrible first attempt haha. I thought it was pretty good cause I shaved some time off my lap times in test drives while playing with the settings but then went and raced it and I was a good 4 seconds slower than everyone else. Well I will be throwing that tune away haha. I think where I went wrong is my upgrade selections (well the tuning settings as well but first thing to sort out is getting the right upgrades). I choose racing tyres but then it severely limited me on other upgrades that I could add as it put me too close to the class limit. I then could not adjust the gearing, alignment, springs, damping and brakes I gather cause I didn’t have the right upgrades (Is that correct?). Also adding Aero dropped the speed rating from 5.2 to 4.9 (not sure if Aero is needed on a D class either). In test drives though having the aero improved my lap times greatly over the stock rating so wasn’t too bothered at the time until I really underperformed in an actual race with it.
The car I attempted to tune was the Toyota MR2 SC 1989. Stock its a D350. I wanted to tune it to D class. I added Race tyres, Racing rims which shaved off 25lb, increased rim size to 17 in and increased tyre width (I forget by how much I think it was the 1st selection after stock size cause I was too close to class limit). I added street springs and front and rear anti roll bars. Then added Aero front and rear, a supercharger(trying to compensate for loss of speed from Aero) and race differential. Stock it was S 5.2 H 4.3 A 6.1 L 6.8 B 4.2. After upgrades it was S 4.9 H 5.2 A 6.2 L 7.0 B 5.4. Lap time stock was 2:01.082 On Indy circuit. Lap time after upgrades was 1:51.463. Playing around with the settings I could adjust the lap time was 1:49.875. I think I ended on Tyres 28.5 psi (heat 230 F and psi was about 34 I think) anti roll F 26.24 R 18.26 Aero F 65 R 130 Diff A 90% D 75%. Any advice on what I should have done and should do to improve it would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve just downloaded the Forza droid app on my phone. Will this still work with Forza 5 and is it worth using?
Also by the way what is launch excuse my ignorance but not sure what it is?
Beachedas25 it looks like you’ve gotten somewhere with this, I see you have 3 class D tunes uploaded now. I might try out that Balanced tune, in a Class Competition.
The 1989 Toyota MR2 SC is used in the Early Sport Compact series as a Class C. Building a C500 would give you a lot more room to play with for upgrades, and a tune more newcomers would find use for.
In my experience, D class cars don’t need aero at all even in a grip build. However, based on my knowledge, I always put a bumper and wing on either way and take out all the downforce, since I’m pretty sure that results in less overall downforce. I usually ignore the performance bars to a certain extent since I find them inaccurate concerning the aero upgrades (might be wrong on that?). Based on the starting point on that car I would recommend street tires at the most, but I would leave them stock, since D class in my experience doesn’t require higher compounds. If you’re going for a grip build I would recommend just widening the tires, instead of upgrading the compound itself. I would max out everything in the handling section on every car as default (race everything) except the chassis and the weight reduction, as that varies. Based on my experience, I usually lower the differential settings to around 35% and 15-8% front and rear on an RWD car, but I think that may be personal preference. I think part of your troubles is that Indy GP is a speed track, which may not have helped your times. Even though its a grip car, you might not have enough speed parts on it, and/or you might have a inaccurate gear ratio for that track. Hopefully this helped
Note - I’m a relatively new tuner, and some of this info might be wrong. If any experienced tuners could make sure I didn’t mess anything up, I’d appreciate it. Also, could someone confirm that the bumper and wing actually provide less downforce on the car provided you move the slider all the way to speed? I might have messed up big time on that (I have it on all my cars :/).