5. Settings and Tuning
by Boundary Layer
The general accepted definition of drifting is controlling a car in a state of oversteer which has been purposely created by the driver. To maintain control, consideration must be given to the loads imposed on each tire as you travel through a turn. The more excess stress you can remove from the front tires and place on the rear tires with settings, the better.
In this section I will explain how car settings (suspension setup in particular) can be beneficial in creating and controlling your drifts in GT4. The types of handling changes you can expect to experience by altering a particular setting will be outlined.
Some of the settings suggested here may not accurately reflect the types of settings that would be applied to a drift car in real life. Afterall, this is a guide for a video game, so you will find reference material for the videogame.
I ask you to understand that just because I write one thing does not mean that something else cannot be happening in your setup. It is the combination of all your settings that will determine your cars attitude it is entirely possible that changing one setting may result in an unexpected change in handling due to some interaction with another portion of your setup.
Ex. You reduce spring rate and ride height expecting an increase in grip, only to find that you have bottomed out your car.
So please keep and open mind, assume nothing, do not be afraid to experiment outside of the beaten path, and record observations if necessary.
Finally, please realize that the settings suggested here are simply guidelines meant to offer somewhere to begin tuning from. Ive tried to be as objective as possible, but you should still expect a little personal bias. Some of this section is intentionally left a bit on the vague side to make it as far reaching and all-encompassing as possible. But to create a guide that is accurate for all cars is a task simply too large and extensive to be considered practical. Different cars, and also different drivers, will require different settings. Everyone has their own theories on the right way to tune a car.
If your drift settings do not complement your drifting technique you will never be drifting to the best of your ability ~ Boundary Layer (and others)
Okay, I know what youre thinking, Shut-up with all the disclaimers BL and just tell me how to tune my car!!! Fine, here it comes.
____________________
A. Power Modifications:
This is all highly subject to the vehicles weight, and are just general guidelines:
For rear drive cars of around 1100 to 1300kg, up to 300hp is normally adequate for drifting - certainly no more than 350 is required (but more may still be used). Lighter vehicles can often do with 150-250hp. An appropriate power level is more difficult to find for heavier vehicles as they usually come with quite torquey engines.
Of course there are those people who enjoy drifting cars with more power than designated here, just as there are those that enjoy stock power. Its all dependent upon the individual.
Its worth noting that with some cars it is possible to install different upgrades resulting in the same power figure, but different torque figure. Torque is valued in GT4 drifting as it is ultimately what will keep your wheels turning as a drift slows you down. If you do come across such a situation, I suggest you take the extra torque.
B. Tire Choice:
It is rare on FR cars in GT4 to require the use of different tire compounds on the front and rear to get them to drift.
Effects:
- Slipperier tires require less effort to generate slip (duh), but may be more difficult to control
- Grippier tires will require more drastic weight transfer and/or more power to initiate and maintain a drift.
- Grippier tires are more likely to cause snapback when exiting a drift.
Recommendations:
N type tires, either N1, N2, or N3 depending on personal preference and the vehicles power. N2s seem to be the norm.
Same compound front and rear.
Other Notes:
S type tires do not seem to fit well in drifting, they behave
.oddly, as if their vertical and horizontal grip are not in proper proportion to one another.
Only in the most extreme circumstances is staggering tires necessary on FRs (something like the 05 Mustang GT).
C. Suspension Settings:
It is recommended that you purchase either racing or original suspension if you plan to tune your suspension for drifting.
i. Spring Rates:
As you may have read in Scaffs guide, spring rates directly influence how the car reacts to weight transfer. To a large degree they determine where the cars mass is supported under neutral loading, and where it will travel if you were to turn or brake. A general rule to keep in mind is that the stiffer you make one end of a car, the less grip will be available there (of course there are exceptions made for extreme settings, but that is not for this guide to cover).
Effects:
Stiffened front spring rate (relative to previous setting)
- More responsive turn in. You can throw the car into the corner more aggressively.
- Less mechanical grip may result in understeer at mid-corner (dont necessarily view this as bad from a drifting point of view!).
- Overstiffening can cause loss of contact with the road through bumps, etc.
- May indirectly amplify the effects of snapback at corner exit.
Softened front spring rate (relative to previous setting)
- Greater front end stability at corner entry and exit.
- Steering response is more sluggish
- More mechanical grip, less understeer.
Stiffened rear spring rate (relative to previous setting)
- Easier to maintain a drift (greater oversteer mid-corner) as long as power exists to keep speed and wheelspin up. The vehicles rotation is more easily controlled by the throttle.
- Less prone to snapback at corner exit.
- Overstiffening can cause loss of contact with the road through bumps, etc.
Softened rear spring rate (relative to previous setting)
- Corner entry may become difficult if set overly soft.
- Violent weight transition at rear of vehicle can be a partial cause of snapback exiting a drift.
- More difficult to initiate drift due to increased mechanical grip (more understeer). In particular, there is less willingness to power over.
Recommendations:
Because these settings are dependent upon the mass and ride height of the vehicle, it is hard to set any acceptable range for it. Generally you should go by feel and tune until you have created a desirable balance. Dont immediately go for maximum front end grip, and minimal rear end grip. A slight tendency to understeer is often helpful for maintaining control during a drift.
Other notes:
I do not think it is correct to compare front and rear spring rates to each other to use as a factor in describing a cars behaviour. Typically, the spring rates will be higher where the car is heaviest. For most FR machines, you will find they come with higher front spring rates. Instead, I would suggest it is more valid to compare the spring rates at each end of the car relative to their initial settings (or a previously observed setting), and by that guage how much oversteer or understeer you have created.
ex) A 2004 S2000 with Racing suspension equipped has default front and rear spring rates of 6.4 and 5.8 kgf/mm respectively. This does not indicate that the car will have a preference to understeer. In fact, I find the car has a slight tendency to oversteer when driven into a corner at a reasonable pace.
ii. Ride Height:
Ride height is essentially the distance the car is held above the road surface by the suspension. This setting directly affects the amount of available suspension travel and how much weight is transferred under accelerations and cornering.
Effects of lowering:
- Less weight transferred under acceleration and cornering maneuvers increased grip.
- More responsive steering, greater agility.
- Lets face it, aesthetics do count for something here. A lower stance just plain looks better.
Effects of raising:
- Simply the inverse of the above.
- Can accommodate softer springs/dampers/stabilizers allowing for greater body pitch and roll.
- Greater weight transfer due to higher COG reduced grip.
- Less nimble, decrease in steering responsiveness.
- Looks hideous
Recommendations:
Leave at least 5 to 10mm above the minimum possible setting allowing for some suspension travel and a reduced tendency to bottom out the car. It may be necessary to adjust this setting from track to track to account for elevation changes and/or the amount of grip available.
Other notes:
Adjusting the ride height is a relatively cheap and effective way to adjust the cars over/understeer balance. Setting the rear of the car slightly higher than the front will result in a greater tendency to oversteer. For cars that do not oversteer easily and rely upon extreme methods of weight transfer, lowering it may make initiating drift more difficult.
iii. Dampers/Shocks:
Damper tuning affects the drift entry and exit the most. They're pretty tough to tune while you're drifting though. Scaffs guide paints a good picture of the effects of changing damper settings.
Recommendations:
Don't tune your dampers with drifting being top priority. Instead, tune for consistent road contact over curbs/undulations etc. This will help you maintain control of the car if you do set the tires on the rumble strips during a drift. Also, try to remove any pitching/oscillations from the car here, if possible.
For light FR cars of maybe 1000 to 1200kg, damper bounds of 4 or 5 usually work pretty good. Test it by running over curbs and feeling for loss of contact/control.
After setting the front and rear bound, adjust the corresponding rebound to be 1 or 2 ticks higher than the bound setting.
If your car understeers off-throttle, sometimes it can be helpful to increase rear rebound to assist lift-off.
Other Notes:
It is customary to have lower bound settings than rebound settings. The soft bound will ensure contact is maintained contact during the initial impact to the suspension, while the stiffer rebound will dissipate the impact energy quickly thereby limiting oscillations.
iv. Camber Angle:
Camber angle in GT4 is the degree to which the top of a tire is tilted inwards towards the car relative to a perfectly vertical position (all camber in GT4 is what is called negative camber in real life).
Effects:
- Increasing camber angle improves grip mid-corner/mid-drift. (only to a point).
- Too much camber decreases grip by reducing the area of the contact patch please avoid using this as a cheap method of creating oversteer.
- Increasing front camber may make it easier to initiate drift by feint/dynamic type entries.
Recommendations:
It is typical to use some camber in the front (1.5 to 3.0) to improve front end grip during a drift.
In the rear, less camber (if any) should be used. If you do add camber to the rear, please do so to REDUCE oversteer, not to create it.
Few cars benefit from camber angles greater than 3.0. Im yet to find one that benefits from anything greater than 4.0.
Other Notes:
As Ive mentioned a few times already, there is such thing as too much camber. The precise value changes from car to car (and as you change the ride height, etc), but it is possible to reach a point where the tires remain in negative camber throughout the duration of a corner. This is undesirable and can make for car that is difficult to control (even from a drifting perspective).
History lesson when drifting was in its infancy, Japanese drifters used to use oni-kyan ("demon camber") to make it easier to maintain wheelspin in low power vehicles. I don't recommend that in GT4 though, there are better ways to create oversteer than this ways that will still allow for the car to be driven normally if so chosen.
v. Toe Angle:
Toe is the degree to which tires on the same axle point inwards toward each other, or outwards away from each other as they roll forwards. In GT4 positive toe is toe in and negative toe is toe out. (this according to sucahyos findings on a PC emulator).
Effects:
- Front toe in (+) creates understeer at corner entry and can reduce the effectiveness of countersteering because the outside loaded tire will be pointed inwards towards the corner slightly, and not into the drift. Straight line stability is improved (whoopee
.).
- Front toe out (-) makes the car more sensitive to minute steering adjustments. Turn in response is improved, but the car as a whole becomes less stable. Countersteering is improved because the outside loaded tire is pointed slightly into the drift.
- Rear toe in (+) causes an increase in understeer at corner entry, improves straight line stability. May improve corner exits slightly with proper LSD settings.
- Rear toe out (-) causes a rather dramatic increase in oversteer and destabilizes the car substantially. The car may want to wander at corner exit with this setting.
Recommendations:
In GT4, the effects of rear toe are more apparent when drifting than changes to front toe. Toe out (-) front and rear is the most useful for drifters. But unless you are using it to correct extremely uncooperative cars or extreme handling characteristics its recommended that toe be left at 0 front and rear.
vi. Stabilizers:
Stabilizers effectively tie the right side of the cars suspension to the left. They control to a significant degree the amount of body roll and rate of lateral weight transfer experienced.
The effects on over/understeer balance of stiffening or softening the stabilizers are quite similar (note not identical) to the effects of changing spring rates. The effects are most noticeable mid corner where the action of dampers is minimal.
Stiffened Front (higher numerical value)
- More understeer
- Snappier steering, quicker response.
- Less body roll.
Softened Front (lower numerical value)
- More mechanical grip, therefore, more oversteer
- Less responsive steering
- Greater body roll and more violent lateral front end weight transfer exiting a corner
Stiffened Rear (higher numerical value)
- More oversteer
- Quick turn-in.
- Less body roll.
- Decreased tendency to snapback at corner exit due to increased rear stability (lateral weight transfer is less violent)
Softened Rear (lower numerical value)
- More mechanical grip, therefore, more understeer
- Car may take on a slightly sluggish feeling through successive corners
- Greater body roll and more violent lateral rear end weight transfer can lead to severe snapback if steering work is untidy
Recommendations:
Id suggest avoiding the use of the upper and lower extreme values for this setting, as the use of those settings can often cause unexpected and undesirable handling traits. Setting the stabilizers too soft can cause you to bottom out the suspension under heavy lateral loads. This will result in an unexpected loss of traction. At the other end of the spectrum, a setting that is too stiff will partially impart vibrations felt by one side of the car onto the other side.
If you do choose to use extreme settings here, take into careful consideration the interaction stabilizers have with other aspects of the suspension. Otherwise, just go by feel to create a desirable car balance and maybe make an effort control any snapback that is apparent.
D. Brake Balance Settings:
Quoting Scaff, The Brake Balance Controller allows both the level of braking force and the ratio of front to rear braking to be controlled.
For example, a front setting of 3 and a rear setting of 3 applies even braking pressure front and rear. A setting of 6 6 also applies pressure evenly front and rear, but the amount of pressure is now doubled. Scaff goes into far greater detail in his GT4 Suspension & Brake Tuning Guide, so if interested please follow that link. But for those solely interested in drifting, this bit of knowledge is enough for us to work with.
The aim here is to create a setup that allows us to cause the rear tires to slip by applying the brakes while the car is experiencing some lateral weight transfer. This differs slightly from pulling the e-brake because it does not necessarily lockup the rear tires, and will not kill your engine revs if done while the gas is not being applied.
Effects:
- A high front setting reduces the grip available for steering work, so maneuverability suffers and understeer may result.
- A low front setting leaves more grip available for steering during braking maneuvers. This is conducive to oversteering, and a desirable trait as a drifter.
- A high rear setting reduces the grip available at the rear tires to resist lateral forces. A proper setting [from a drifters viewpoint] permits slip to be created by applying the brakes.
- A low rear setting leaves a large amount of grip available to the rear tires during braking thus severely impairing the vehicles ability to execute braking drifts.
Recommendations:
A low front setting and a high rear setting. [I quite often use 2-9 or 3-11, etc] Such a setting keeps the front end free to look after the steering, and loosens up the rear under braking. Because we [drifters] typically use slippery N type tires, Id advise against anything higher than a setting of about 5 in the front. Quickly experimenting with a few values should allow you to find a comfortable setting.
Notes:
Contrary to common belief, the amount of forward weight transfer that occurs during deceleration has nothing to do with the front-rear brake balance and everything to do with the magnitude of the deceleration. [no worries, Im not going to pull out any dynamics equations, just trust me on this] That is, greater braking force means greater forward weight transfer. So, forward weight transfer will be increased by boosting either of the front or rear brake balance settings.
However (and this is important!), since we are severely limited in the amount of forward weight transfer we can create by the low adhesion of our tires, it is best not to pursue thoughts of increasing weight transfer by adjusting brake balance. Any advantage gained will be largely outweighed by the disadvantageous loss of steering response that will occur. The braking force of a sliding tire is less than that of a tire on the threshold of grip [coefficient of static friction > coefficient of kinetic friction].
E. Limited Slip Differential Settings:
It is recommended that a Full-Customize LSD be purchased, although it is still quite possible to drift on other options.
LSD settings will make or break an otherwise good drift setup. Take your time here and make meaningful observations on several types of corners. I personally like to use TM and GVS for tuning LSDs for the wide variety of corner radii and entry speeds available there.
i. Initial Torque:
Quoting rsmithdrift, This setting determines the responsiveness of the LSD's application. A higher setting means more responsive and tighter at rest. (at rest meaning when no accel or decel force is being applied)
Effects:
- A higher setting (relative to a prior one) will make the car less maneuverable when no slip or wheelspin is present and increases understeer. Conversely, during a drift a higher setting allows more throttle control over the vehicles rotation.
- A high setting reduces the influence of the LSD Decel and Accel settings on the vehicles behaviour.
Recommendations:
A moderate setting of 10 to 20 is not uncommon and normally works quite well. I have gone as high as 30 or 35 on cars that are extremely loose handling [ie. Amuse S2000 Street Version] - but I reserve such a setting a setting for rare circumstances.
ii. Limited-slip Acceleration:
Effects:
- A high setting allows for drifts to be controlled more easily by the throttle. During a drift the rear of the car should feel a little bit more solid, or connected [that's the best I can describe it]. But when no slip is present the car may take on a tendency to understeer.
- Too high of a setting may make the car quite prone to spinning once slip is initiated when the gas is applied heavily. It may also make it difficult to exit a corner without the rear end trying to snake on you (note: different than snapback)
- Drifts may be cut short by higher settings if the car does not have the power essential for spinning both tires at its current drift angle. High powered cars will likely not notice this difficulty
- A lower setting takes some throttle control away from the drift. The car will drift towards the outside of the track a little more. While no slip is present there is less tendency for the car to understeer.
- A setting that is too low permits the outside tire to regain grip while you roast the inside rear tire. This leads to those pesky super-stalling drifts (particularly on hairpins).
Recommendations:
While drifting you want both rear wheels to be spinning. A proper accel setting will accomplish this during the drift, but you should also tweak it to find a balance that lets you exit corners effectively. A setting that is too tight (large number) might lock while youre looking to drive out of the corner you might start weaving to try and get the back end in line. Conversely, a low setting may leave you stranded at the corner exit spinning one tire and doing nothing with the other.
A balanced setting will be determined by considering you tire choice, power, and initial torque settings. Settings ranging from 20 to 45 or so are not uncommon. As of just recently Ive been gravitating slightly more towards values in the mid to high 30s for cars in the 275-350hp range on N2s.
iii. Limited-slip Decel:
Effects:
- A lower setting allows a greater speed differential between left and right tires during engine braking & deceleration. This makes for a more maneuverable car and a decrease in understeer at corner entry.
- A higher setting does exactly the inverse.
- A setting that is too high will create excessive understeer at corner entry and seems to contribute to snapback exiting a drift.
Recommendations:
Low settings from 5 to 20 (rarely higher than 30) are the most useful for drifters. Long graceful corner entries become possible and it makes initiating drift by either the lift-off or braking technique much easier.
F. Weight Reductions:
Reducing the mass of your vehicle will make it more maneuverable, accelerate faster, and stop quicker. All of this is desirable from a drifting standpoint. The lighter you can make your car the easier it will be to control.
Recommendations:
Stage 3 Weight Reduction.
G. Ballast:
The ability to add additional weight to cars is more useful in MR applications, but for the sake of completeness I will say a few words here:
Effects:
- Moving the bias slider farther left (-) adds the specified ballast weight to the front of the vehicle. This usually results in more understeer [note: there are exceptional cases where it does not].
- Likewise, moving the bias slider farther right (+) results in greater oversteer.
- The amount of over/understeer created depends on how much additional weight is added, as well as the bias setting.
Recommendations:
Avoid adding ballast to FR cars when at all possible, additional weight decreases the cars responsiveness. This should be used as a last resort option to correct a cars ill-handling.
If you do use it, add weight to either the +50 or -50 location. This will permit the largest possible change in balance with the least possible weight added.
) and everything is looking good. However when you come to the exit you realize that you're still at too much angle. So you over compensate and whip the car back around to get things "straight" again. This is understandable but uneeded. Just use the same technique you would if you were coming out perfectly. Of course, if you're about to go off the track do what you can to stay on! 
But in general there is nothing horribly wrong with having a nice high angle exit as long as it's free of the wonderful fish tail. 
