Have any tuners posted complete changelog tunes?

  • Thread starter Hastatus
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I have used many final tunes provided by several members in this forum, I have read many guides posted here, and yet I still find it difficult to understand the entire process from stock car to final tune: especially the sequence of changes. Have any of the tuners ever posted a complete list of every change they made to a car on a particular track (including errors, test settings, etc). I have always suspected that this would be a great way for people to learn, because we could take the same car onto the same track and replicate the car at various stages of tuning to see and feel what the tuner did when driving: i.e. we could kind of follow along in a more intimate way. If such a thing exists, please direct me to it. If not, I hope I might encourage one or several tuners to consider creating such posts as a valuable teaching/learning tools. Thanks.
 
that would be great but it could possibly be well over 100's of steps and lap times to post and it would be unique to that particular car. That's the beauty of getting a fast car out of a tune is that it's not done by a formula. I can post a short version of how I attack a car though.

1. I start by driving cars until i find one that behaves well from the factory. Rather than try to change the way a car drives, I like to enhance good behavior.

2. I like to tune on the Nurburgring GP/F because it has every type of turn you'll want to see. flat, positive and negative banking, hard braking, hairpin, big and small chicane, and decreasing radius. it is a relatively smooth track though so I like to then take it to Spa for higher speeds. I finish at big willow. If you can make it predictable and stable there, it will be predictable everywhere.

3. I add all the parts that cannot be adjusted like the flywheel, driveshaft, and weight loss. Then I set a new lap record on a clean but not perfect lap. I then add all the adjustable parts but set them at the factory settings. remember I started with a car that I liked already and am just trying to make it better.

4. I then set the transmission first and while setting another lap record I look for the one thing that is killing my speed the most. I then set the LSD at a base setting I like to start with depending on drivetrain.
MR is usually 8/20/12
FR is usually 6/18/6
4WD is usually F-6/20/6 R-6/30/6
I then drive a few laps making adjustments to cure wheelspin or over/under rotation. I get to a happy point, not a finished point.

5. Springs are next. They are usually very soft so I raise them to about under the F in "front" right above the slider. This immediately helps with braking and weight transfer. I also take the compression up 1 click front and rear. Then set a new lap record. I then gradually bring the front springs up until the car doesn't dive and cook the front tires while braking. When I get to that point, I will bring the rear up proportionately to keep the handling balance that I started with. Then I try to set a new lap record. If it's faster than before great, if it's not then i start softening the springs again till I can beat my old time.

6. then I adjust the dampers according to where I need the grip. If i want the rear to rotate more while turning I will up the rear dampers so it would go from 3/3-4/4 to 3/4-4/5. I'f I still have some power oversteer or the weight is moving around too much in the rear i will raise the front stiffness instead. If the car takes too long to settle after braking I will also raise the extension another click front and rear. So for more rotation I would have ended up with a 3/4-5/6 setting. I then drive the car again to find out how I want to set my ARB. If i want a little more lift off oversteer and better turn in I will raise the rear 1 click. If i want a bit more stability and understeer while starting a corner I would go up 1 click in the front instead. Now that I've tuned the car for smaller aspects of it's handling characteristics I should be able to beat my old lap pretty easily.

7. If after all of that, the car is still not rotation like I want, It's time to adjust the toe and camber. first I bring rear toe down to 0. That should get a lot more movement in the rear. I then raise or decrease it depending on how it's rotating. After that I will bring camber in the rear down to 0. It will allow the tires in the back to rotate better. if it gets harder to come out of a turn because of oversteer I will start adding camber .2 at a time until it's cured.

8. After setting the suspension I go back the the LSD and make the adjustments needed now that the car handles how I want. Ideally you want the least amount of intrusion. a perfect car would need no help so you would have 5/60/5. I try to get as close to that as i can. you will usually be drifting around with that setup though. I end up between 6 and 15 initial, 16 and 30 acceleration, and 6 and 18 braking.

9. Then I go through the whole setup adjusting every thing one click up and then one click down to see if it makes it better or worse. for example I would raise my front compression from 4 to 5 then from 4 to 3 and see if 3,4,or 5 was better. then I move to rear compression. I do the entire tune like that.

10. After all of that I take it to spa and big willow and make small adjusments for higher speeds and mid/long corner stability. then I take it back to the GP/f and make sure it can go around within a 10th of before and I'm done.

There's personal tricks I have to get the behavior that I want that I left out but this is the gist of how I go from start to finish. There is constantly changes being made once you get one setting right. you can get one setting perfect and that allows you to ease up on another setting. For example if I tame wheelspin with the LSD at first, then set the suspension to tame wheelspin, I can ease up on the LSD setting. Now I have the wheelspin tamed but not at the cost of LSD induced understeer. It's a constant back and forth with settings until you are done.

Hope that helps.
 
that would be great but it could possibly be well over 100's of steps and lap times to post and it would be unique to that particular car. That's the beauty of getting a fast car out of a tune is that it's not done by a formula. I can post a short version of how I attack a car though.

...{a lot of valuable info}

I would not mind 100 steps and lap times. I would not mind taking a week or two to follow along. It's the way Universities and Colleges usually teach: you get a lot of theoretical information and then you look at actual case studies or on the job experience. I would like to see such detailed case studies. I know that tuners such as yourself go through a lot of steps every time you tune a car. One time a thorough documentation would be extremely valuable: even if you just point form things with a few technical terms - oversteers: set X to Y [you would not have to explain in detail what oversteering is or anything; nor why you adjusted in a particular direction; just what your brief thoughts to yourself were]. Think of it like instead of trying to teach someone, you simply did your thing and were filmed as you did it.

Take for instance where you said: "If I still have some power oversteer or the weight is moving around too much in the rear I will raise the front stiffness instead. If the car takes too long to settle after braking I will also raise the extension another click front and rear." These are examples where it would be great to have the actual settings at the time before and after a change to see and feel first hand what the car does.

Thanks for posting your general strategy. 👍
 
Fair enough but I'm not willing to be the one to document it all. If I'm not having fun it defeats the point of playing games. I wish you luck in finding someone though.
 

This looks exactly like what I was looking for. One thing I might suggest is that you mention early in the post about looking at the post immediately before it, as when you click on the link it is not immediately clear that the preceding post is relevant due to the way the linked post ends up at the top of the screen when led to it through a link.

I'll spend a few days trying this car out on this track at various stages and get back to you.

Thank you very much Motor City Hami! 👍
 
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