Thanks for the great post.
Can you explain how to handle braking in older cars? I'm starting to think that trail braking is always a bad idea in some older cars. Should we gently brake in older cars?
It's not that trail braking is a bad idea, trail braking is almost always good.
The thing with older cars, and street cars, they have much softer suspension and therefor more body roll, along with less grippy tires. The downside to this is that the car is a lot less precise, and it can "wander" in the brake zone. The upside is that you can be a lot less linear with your braking inputs.
A stiff car requires smooth releasing of the brake pedal, smooth application of the throttle. A softer car can get away with more erratic releasing of the brake, more spiky throttle application.
Even with older cars though, you still want to be aggressive with your initial brake input. Even if they have no downforce, the more weight you can transfer to the front of the car, the more initial stopping force you'll get. Of course, with soft suspension and crappy tires, there can sometimes be a limit on how aggressive you can be. In those cases, I prefer to work on the tune of the car, having a car that is stable under braking is important to me.
- if the front end compresses too much, cause the back to lift high and wander all over the place, I'll increase front Spring rates, decrease front slow bump, decrease rear slow rebound. The dampers adjust the speed of the movement, lower numbers making the car move slower, more floaty.
- if the fronts lock way too easily, especially in bumpy brake zones, ill soften front springs.
- if I get front lockup under initial braking everywhere, i lower the brake pressure. I always start high here, work my way down.
- if I can tell it's either just the fronts or just the rears locking, a slight brake balance adjustment can help.
- reducing front camber can help increase stopping power, at the cost of lateral grip while cornering.
- reducing front tire pressure can help with braking, at the cost of everything that comes with running lower pressures.
- if after adjust springs and dampers the car is still squirmy under heavy braking, I
INCREASE the Decel Lock in the diff, contrary to what the in game description says to do. So in a clutch diff, if the rear is squirmy under braking. I increase the Coast Ramp value. Too much of this will cause the car to understeer as you turn in while trail braking, or potentially in any curved braking zones, which there aren't a tone of.
Keep in mind that that's kind of all just for inntital braking. You can't tune a car to be perfect on initial braking, and be crap everywhere else. It's all about knowing which adjustments you can make on different cars in different sitations, and not only how to fix a problem you have, but how fixing that problem may or may not create a new one. That, I don't really know how to put into words, it just comes with time - it's like seeing the matrix once you get it though.
@IanBell ,
@The_American , can either of you confirm that the in game written description for how the differentials are supposed to work is correct?
Currently, for the Clutch type LSD, it says that lowering the ramp angles increases the locking effect of the diff, which should make the car more stable. After doing a lot of testing, and based off what iv learned over the years, the lower values decrease the effect of the diff, marking the car more unstable:
Take the Nissan 240Z GTA to Nurb GP, set the Coast Ramp to 20, and try to maintain a straight line in the braking zone. Then increase that value by 40 or 50 points, and you'll instantly feel the car is more stable in the braking zone.
Same thing with the Power Ramp. Same car, run really low Power Ramp values, the back end steps out every time you touch the throttle. Increase the value by a lot, and you'll get corner exit understeer.
I've spend about 4 hours trying to set up this 240, and another 2 hours on the GT86 GT4, another car very squirmy on the brakes with default settings. On both cars, I followed the in game tool tip, lowered the Coast Ramp value to get more rear end stability under braking, only to make it worse. Of course, at the time I assumed it was working as stated, so I messed with every other setting. Finally I came back to the diff, as nothing felt right. After increase the Coast Ramp value, I instantly found the rear stability I was looking for, contrary to what the game told me should have happened.
I think it's literally that the words Lower and Higher are mixed up in the discription.
. Almost 10 years of studying tuning in games, I know how to get what I want out of most cars (high downforce is not my thing yet).
