Tuners, Some basics for beginner?

[FPScott]

Well, I LOVE driving stock cars. They offer some of the best races for me. I would like to dabble a bit into tuning though for some variety. I understand a bit about camber and tire pressure but I would like to have a bit more understanding. So to the tuners out there, where do you start when you get a fresh car? What are some of the things you do that usually produce some positive results? I'm not looking to become a master of tuning transmissions but would like a few pointers. Thanks in advance

Mods if you wanna move this to the tuning forum, feel free I just failed to notice there was a place for tuning talk.

 

[IceMan PJN]

I don't know tuning intimately enough to do it myself, so from FM3 and now FM4 what I've done is buy some upgrades to get my car where I want it in terms of performance and then I use the online tuning tool (click here or on the link below) to tune it a bit. The results will be generalized rather than the best possible for specific tracks, and even for a generalized setup I'm sure there are some players that can do better than what the tool does, but it's still a noteworthy improvement over not using the tuning tool. In FM3 I observed improvements of maybe a few seconds per lap using the tuning tool.

http://www.forzatraders.com/flash/ForzaMotorsport3CarSetupTool.swf

There's a tuning app called ForzaDroid which produces the same results (probably using the same formula).

 

[Vital1]

Hey, I forgot all about the tuning guide. Its a good resource and at the very least is a good starting point.

 

[FPScott]

Thanks for the link, I appreciate it.

 

[ChadSpeed]

I have found a very general tune for most rwd cars that is a good starting point. For example if doing A class, I like to have between a 5.7 and 6.1 in handling. First I go straight to tires and decide whether to use race or sport, then add width if necessary to get me close to my handling number. Then you can buy brakes, suspension, roll bars, roll cage, and weight reduction to get to the handling number you want. Then just add power upgrades to get to the top of class.

When tuning you can learn a lot from reading the in game descriptions. I like a car with minimal understeer.

I start off by decreasing the tire pressure to 29F, 28R. Transmission tuning if you have equipped can be quickly tuned by using the final drive ratio and benchmarking over and over to achieve best accel and top speed. Next I usually run 2.0 neg camber up front and neg 1.5 rear. A bit of tow helps turn in and I start with .5 front and .3 rear. Finally the caster is lowered to 3.8. Helps the camber and toe adjustments work better.

With the rebound and bump stiffness you can reduce understeer/increase oversteer by increasing the rear of both relative to the front, usually not drastically different for default or each other, same with springs.

Everything else like aero and differential are to your preference, again the benchmark is useful here. Hope this helps you.

I have 4 of the top selling A class tunes tweaked by using this method.💡

 

[FPScott]

Thanks, that will help out a lot.

 

[12thgear]

I recommend adjusting tire pressure and running the synthetic benchmark to see which pressure gives you the shortest braking distance and highest lateral Gs. Typically you'll run the same pressure front and back, but not always. As a rule of thumb you can then subtract 3psi from that number as a starting point. Generally your tires will gain about 3psi when they warm up during the race. I do recommend taking test drives with tire telemetry displayed to confirm. A heavy right foot can really cook the drive wheels faster. You also will need to tweak the tire pressures depending on race distance. But I think -3psi from optimum benchmarks is a good starting point. Do rerun the benchmarks after making changes to tire compound, sizes, wheel weight, chassis (weight, bracing, etc), brakes.

Some cars come with adjustable aero stock. I recommend playing with that and benchmarking it as well. For really tight, twisty tracks, you're usually OK maxing the downforce. For tracks with long straights that will obviously kill your top speed.

If you have the racing brakes, it's worth benchmarking brake balance. Often a sublte tweak of a couple of percentage points is all that's needed.

Also, don't adjust everything. Tweak one setting, test, tweak, test again, then move on. You want to get a handle on what each tweak actually does. You can try test driving your car with a tuning parameter at each extreme to get a better understanding of how it affects your car.