What is the best way to tune for off-road races?

I am fine at tuning for on-road races but I have no real idea what is best for off-road racing. Doesn’t need to be overly complicated explanations. Just a good solid idea of the most important principles.

I deleted my post, because I thought I was reading in Forza 4.

good luck in your tuning. I don’t play Horizen at all, but probably there is no good way to tune for “Off road”.

Yeah, ignore post #2.

A good start would be this. You’re looking for the “off-road building template” somewhere in the first post. It produces a fairly good base build.

If you’re looking for an off-road build, where is it racing? Will it be mainly on Storm Island? Will it be in he Mainland? Will it go on the road at all? What you would build for Strom Island would be different than Montellino for example. On the Mainland, you rarely have courses that are all off-road. You may find all on-road races, but the rest all have some portion of road in them. Many off-road oriented builds I do use race parts as opposed to rally parts. I always try to tune my cars so they do well off-road but also do well on-road because I like to race online.

Some tips in general for cross country races:

  1. Race Breaks - depending on weight, power, and PI - typically one of the last things I put on a car. It always a change in brake pressure and bias.
  2. Chassis Reinforcement - what are the origins of the vehicle, how well does the suspension work off-road, how do the front and rear react together. It adds weight but can provide stability.
  3. Alignment - Read some of the reference links in Kitty’s post. I shared [this one](http://www.rapid-racer.com/suspension-tuning.php#Damping/ Bump and Rebound) and it can help you with the concepts. Use it to help with stability and response off-road. Don’t be worried about using “strange” settings.
  4. Damping - The same as alignment, don’t be worried about “strange” values if they work. Use the reference links and this forum post to help you fine tune your settings.

Just because it’s off-road (or rally) doesn’t mean you need rally parts. Again, just because it’s not rally doesn’t mean rally parts won’t be helpful.

Keep trying, experimenting, and messing around with it. In the end, experience is king.

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It is mainland racing. I have to pick up Storm Island. No Point picking it up till I get through the insane amount of vanilla content.

Thanks for the reply, lots of good info here.

I was going to say you should check out my Shelby Raptor build but it uses Storm Island upgrade parts.

If you want to see some off-road vehicles try my 2011 WRX Sti - it was built for off-road. My Honda Civic does surprisingly well off-road as well.

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Ok, I will check those out.

I’ve found dropping the rear ride height all the way down and raising the front ride height to .5 inches above the rear makes a world of difference in some cars. It works very well in the Veneno and GT-R R34. It doesn’t work on all cars, but it’s very easy to check and well worth it.

Yeah, ride height is something I’ve been wondering about a lot lately. Apparently, IRL track racing the front ride height would never be higher than the rear ride height. Generally, rear higher than front creates more downforce. Perhaps in some drag applications shifting weight towards the rear wheels by using a higher front height might work. I guess in your examples less downforce is good off road for those particular cars. Thoughts?

I was test driving an Alpha Romeo 4C (S1 class) through the dried up river bed. I could drive full speed from one end to the other with no drama at all. I lowered the ride height so it was even and drove back and it was like someone that didn’t know they were doing tuned my car. At one point, it flipped over too.

I agree that in real life the car’s handling would probably suffer from an adjustment like this. But in the game, it makes the car very stable over rough terrain and it doesn’t really affect it on normal roads. But, like I said before, I’ve tried it on multiple cars and I had bad experiences too.

Lower ride height in the front (compared to the rear) forces out air from beneath the car quicker and creates more downforce. According to McLaren, a lowering the front ride height by 20mm on the 675LT creates considerably more downforce at nearly every speed where it would be necessary.

Having a higher ride height in the front would put a bit more push on the rear springs which could lead to more grip. Overall however it leads to more room for suspension travel. The higher the ride height, the more room the suspension has to do its thing which results in an easier and smoother ride over uneven and offroad surfaces. Raising the front end in the riverbed instantly provides a smoother ride because the suspension has more room, you’re not jostling the front end around all the bumps, and your damping settings can actually do what they are meant to do at which point the rear does not matter too much. You could raise the rear equally to the front and it would most likely be the same. If you’re not using a one-tune-fits-all method here or if you simply don’t care about the road portions because the car does well anyway, try leaving your front ride height where you had it and lifting the rear so it’s a click or two higher…