How can I add stability when braking in a straight line without adding understeer mid to late corner

41
England
London
Rooky_Balboa
I've just started doing my own scratch tunes.

I've tuned the 512 BB on Apricot Hill, really happy with how I've managed to balance it, including corner entry / exit, LSD, and almost perfect weight dist through a corner.

Then I've taken her to Grand Valley Speedway, and I can't break for the first righthand hairpin after the straight without skidding off the road almost immediately upon hitting the breaks.

It seemed the car was being overloaded on the front end, and then overtaken by the back end as my brake balance was higher on the fronts.

I pushed the weight slightly back which improved it, but this ruins the lovely balance I had on the limit mid corner, and this makes it a lot harder to pithily catch a slide.

I increased the rear toe in, which also helped, but this results in indersteer exiting the many long tightish bends on this track, another compromise I don't want to make.

The other thing I did was increased LSD decel - but this is now upto 32 so don't really want to take too much higher.

Can anyone recommend anything I could try that would mean I dont have to make the above compromises?

I have fairly soft springs, midish dampers (higher setting compression front and extension rear than ext front and comp rear to give grip on accel), and mid to high arb's - higher setting on the front.

Any help much appreciated!
 
I've just started doing my own scratch tunes.

I've tuned the 512 BB on Apricot Hill, really happy with how I've managed to balance it, including corner entry / exit, LSD, and almost perfect weight dist through a corner.

Then I've taken her to Grand Valley Speedway, and I can't break for the first righthand hairpin after the straight without skidding off the road almost immediately upon hitting the breaks.

It seemed the car was being overloaded on the front end, and then overtaken by the back end as my brake balance was higher on the fronts.

I pushed the weight slightly back which improved it, but this ruins the lovely balance I had on the limit mid corner, and this makes it a lot harder to pithily catch a slide.

I increased the rear toe in, which also helped, but this results in indersteer exiting the many long tightish bends on this track, another compromise I don't want to make.

The other thing I did was increased LSD decel - but this is now upto 32 so don't really want to take too much higher.

Can anyone recommend anything I could try that would mean I dont have to make the above compromises?

I have fairly soft springs, midish dampers (higher setting compression front and extension rear than ext front and comp rear to give grip on accel), and mid to high arb's - higher setting on the front.

Any help much appreciated!
@Motor City Hami did A TUNE on an NSX for TT at Ascari many months ago and if I remember correctly, the LSD Decel was at like 35. With a tail happy rear, do not be afraid to run it that high IF needed, one more click of rear brake might be worth a try, but only one click! Seems like getting the brakes fixed should cure your issue, you may also want to try and brake earlier, float to the apex and then throttle out. Easy in - fast out method rather than diving the corner hard.

Edit: Just checked, his LSD was 32 Decel, I remember only because I had never seen anyone list it that high, I used part of that tune at the time and it was very helpful at that level. Good luck. That is a difficult car to totally tame.
 
Check your rear extension setting. Try increasing or decreasing it 1 or 2 points. This can often be caused by weight transfering forward too quickly or too slowly. You may also want to soften the rear ARB a bit. If the car is too stiff that can also cause it.

And as a last resort, try increasing rear +ve toe.

Good luck with it. Let us know how you make out.
 
Brake earlier and come off the brakes at a certain critical moment mid way through the braking zone, then back on the brakes. Take notice of the crest and change of direction in the braking zone, this is more tricky to drive in GT6 than previous GT games. You could adjust the tunes settings, but I personally do not suggest it.


The thing is, tuning for Apricot Hill requires a setup more towards oversteer than pretty much any other circuit I can think of. A tune made at Apricot Hill might likely drive very well at GV, other than at the end of the start/finish straight.
 
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Thanks guys that's a great help!

@MrGrado I agree, I've never really noticed that damn crest in previous versions of the game, and I haven't raced on it in GT6 much yet.
Agreed I will have to adjust my driving style, but I also want to put a bit of forgiveness into my tune - presently I spin 90% of the time on that one section unless I drive very slowly!
I want to be able to attack it fairly aggressively otherwise as soon as I am in the fog-of-war race environment I'll either crash or get overtaken by everyone.

I did already swap round the break balance so that rear is higher than front, and I wound them down quite a bit too - I forgot to add that in my previous post.

I was wondering if raising the front ride height would take some of the weight off the front end too? But I know this encourages oversteer so might not work.

I'll have a little tinker with you guys' suggestions and let you know what I come out with...

Really chuffed with the responses you have given me, what a nice community this is! :-)
 
The tuning guide that @Motor City Hami made has a troubling shooting section, and per that if your front is over loading than decreasing your front compression and rear extensions a click at time will help with reducing weight transfer to the front, but if your under loading the front tires increase them, what's your front toe setting? I had problems with braking distance in the last fitt challenge due to the toe settings they help with turn in but at the cost of braking.
If your springs are really soft try adding 1 kg/mm to them.
 
The tuning guide that @Motor City Hami made has a troubling shooting section, and per that if your front is over loading than decreasing your front compression and rear extensions a click at time will help with reducing weight transfer to the front, but if your under loading the front tires increase them, what's your front toe setting? I had problems with braking distance in the last fitt challenge due to the toe settings they help with turn in but at the cost of braking.
If your springs are really soft try adding 1 kg/mm to them.

Hi mate, you've got the damper explanation confused.

Decreasing front compression and rear extension will speed the transfer of weight to the front. This is likely to worsen the condition as it appears the OP's problem is caused by his rear heavy car unloading too quickly under braking.

Scrubbing off a little speed before the crest of the corner as suggested by @MrGrado sounds solid advice if the tune is working well everywhere else on the circuit. Otherwise I'd be increasing Decel then rear extension and hoping it doesn't spoil the balance elsewhere.
 
Hi mate, you've got the damper explanation confused.

Decreasing front compression and rear extension will speed the transfer of weight to the front. This is likely to worsen the condition as it appears the OP's problem is caused by his rear heavy car unloading too quickly under braking.

Scrubbing off a little speed before the crest of the corner as suggested by @MrGrado sounds solid advice if the tune is working well everywhere else on the circuit. Otherwise I'd be increasing Decel then rear extension and hoping it doesn't spoil the balance elsewhere.
Sad part is I edited to the above post had the other way around when I wrote it the first time and went wait that's not right stiffer speeds up transfer guess I shouldn't be seconding guessing my self lol.

Yeah @lionhear2113 is right turn at Daytona RC will put your car to the.test for breaking, Ascari is good as well it's got a Great mix of turns as it's a real life test track it's set up to put a car though it's paces with just about every turn that exists in one lap.
 
Hi mate, you've got the damper explanation confused.

Decreasing front compression and rear extension will speed the transfer of weight to the front. This is likely to worsen the condition as it appears the OP's problem is caused by his rear heavy car unloading too quickly under braking.

Scrubbing off a little speed before the crest of the corner as suggested by @MrGrado sounds solid advice if the tune is working well everywhere else on the circuit. Otherwise I'd be increasing Decel then rear extension and hoping it doesn't spoil the balance elsewhere.

@rams1de I haveddone pretty much exactly what you said:
I dropped the rear extention, while maintaining fairly high front compression, this allows the rear wheels to keep in contact with the ground when the weight moves to the front of the car, and thus stops it losing traction so much.

I tried stiffening the rear springs, but this made it very difficult to lay any power down out of corners, especially when going through the several linked turns in the middle section of the track. So I wound it back down to my original setting.

My other adjustment made was increasing LSD decel slightly as I can afford some understeer into the corner, it's just mid and late corner I didn't want it.

The above, together with approaching the first right hander in a way that I can brake in as straight a line as possible for as long as possible seems like the best solution.

I managed a 207.888 at 500pp on sports hards, not sure how good that is as I have nothing to compare to, but I set it on a very early lap and then for the life of me couldn't beat it no matter how hard I tried.

Many thanks again for all of your feedback - it is most welcome and I am pleasantly surprised how many of you have taken the time to help me out! :-)
 
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One last thing guys - if I pick after market wheel, do the rears have the same width / grip profile as the originals? I read somewhere a few months ago that after market wheels gave you same wheel sizes front and rear, regardless of what you had originally.

I was wondering if this had been fixed?
 
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Grand Valley Speedway.jpg

Ferrari 512 BB '76
My tune: It's edgy, but I find it more planted than other tunes I've found on this forum when using the same tyres. And easier to put the power down without rear endyness, especially out of tight corners.

I drive with a G27 and Nixim mod.
I've tried it with a DS3, I actually found controlled braking easier!
But the front is very twitchy with a DS3, and a bit skittish on exit when using X to power on, so might be better to turn the pad's sensitivity down.

Power Rating: 500 PP
Power: 381 BHP
Torque: 52 Kgf/M
Weight: 1,274 Kg
Distribution: 48:52
Tyres: Sports Hard

Fully Cust suspension:
Ride Height: 100/100
Springs: 6.48 / 10.02
Compression: 4 / 3
Extension: 3 / 4
ARB: 5 / 4
Camber: 0.6 / 0.3
Toe: -0.10 / +0.18

Racing Brakes: 7 / 4

Full cust Gear box:
The flip method
First gear furthest to left.
5th gear furthest to the right.
Final drive set at 3200

Full Cust LSD:
Initial: 10
Accel: 6
Decel: 26

Power:
Tuning stage 1
Power limit: 96.5%
All other parts standard

Body:
Weight reduction Stage 2
Ballast: 56 Kg
Position: -48
All else standard

Any feedback absolutely most definitely 100% actively encouraged!
 
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One last thing guys - if I pick after market wheel, do the rears have the same width / grip profile as the originals? I read somewhere a few months ago that after market wheels gave you same wheel sizes front and rear, regardless of what you had originally.

I was wondering if this had been fixed?
The actual tire size remains the same the rim size changes and thus the sidewall gets smaller, it has a very small affect on handling as the tires can't flex as much as they used to.
If your having sudden weight shift problems with braking and turn in your too soft on the springs or dampers maybe both, if you want to see an a sample on fixing this goto the last fitt challenge and goto the mr2 cars pull the one from lionheart and mine. Mine has this problem his does not, look at the settings differences they are small but made the difference.
 
One last thing guys - if I pick after market wheel, do the rears have the same width / grip profile as the originals? I read somewhere a few months ago that after market wheels gave you same wheel sizes front and rear, regardless of what you had originally.

I was wondering if this had been fixed?
That was fixed a long time ago, width in the rear now matches original, no longer switches to the same as the front.
 
The actual tire size remains the same the rim size changes and thus the sidewall gets smaller, it has a very small affect on handling as the tires can't flex as much as they used to.
If your having sudden weight shift problems with braking and turn in your too soft on the springs or dampers maybe both, if you want to see an a sample on fixing this goto the last fitt challenge and goto the mr2 cars pull the one from lionheart and mine. Mine has this problem his does not, look at the settings differences they are small but made the difference.

I tuned out the weight shift using ARB settings. I found the most problematic was lateral body roll when coming out of corners, or even more so when changing direction from one corner to another.
I raised the rear ARBs as high as possible until it started to be the detriment of grip / drive.
I then raised the front ARB to a level until it would start to create understeer.

I've just posted my tune - just spent a lot of Saturday and about 80% of my brain power on it! Glad I can now walk away from it and move on with my life! ;)
 
I tried out your set up and its not my style, but you have done a great job on this very difficult car to tune.

My question is on your assist set up. With ABS off I experience the hair trigger brake lock up, but with the ABS set to 1 the brakes seem fine (to me) IF your running ABS-0 I suggest replace the racing brakes with standard brakes and slightly readjust the balance (5/4 seemed good when I tried it) If your driving ABS-1 it might just be about braking a bit earlier (pre trail braking) and easy on the pedal or maybe give standard brakes and ABS-0 a try.

I suggest people to try out Rooky's set up, its probably going to be very liked across the board. He cracked a whip on this car and tamed it. The only part on the car that needs to be further looked at is the transmission, its not a great tranny set up, but the rest of the car is tuned great for GTP style.
 
Gave your set up a go today. You've done a nice job to get the car very stable under braking and there's plenty of rear grip so it can be driven quite aggressively.

It could be a fair bit quicker with a little sharper turn in and less mid-corner understeer. If this was my car, I'd be looking to loosen it up just a little to make it more willing to turn into the tight corners and carry more speed through the fast esses and the last turn.

I didn't have time to play with the settings, but removing front camber saved nearly half a second straight away. It was a bit scruffy with o/s front tyres heating up under braking but did allow the car to take tighter lines. Now I'm not suggesting you necessarily remove camber and I'm guessing from the way you're set up, you don't like hanging the back end out. But you could definitely work on getting more front grip to balance the tune.

The front tyres are prone to overloading on corner entry, so try raising rear damper extension.
Try lowering front spring rate and raising the rear by say .25kg at a time to see if you can get a little more rotation mid corner.
There's a lot of positive toe on the front, see if reducing it helps turn in.

I really enjoyed driving your car. Think we might share a similar philosophy to set up - safety first.
 
Gave your set up a go today. You've done a nice job to get the car very stable under braking and there's plenty of rear grip so it can be driven quite aggressively.

It could be a fair bit quicker with a little sharper turn in and less mid-corner understeer. If this was my car, I'd be looking to loosen it up just a little to make it more willing to turn into the tight corners and carry more speed through the fast esses and the last turn.

I didn't have time to play with the settings, but removing front camber saved nearly half a second straight away. It was a bit scruffy with o/s front tyres heating up under braking but did allow the car to take tighter lines. Now I'm not suggesting you necessarily remove camber and I'm guessing from the way you're set up, you don't like hanging the back end out. But you could definitely work on getting more front grip to balance the tune.

The front tyres are prone to overloading on corner entry, so try raising rear damper extension.
Try lowering front spring rate and raising the rear by say .25kg at a time to see if you can get a little more rotation mid corner.
There's a lot of positive toe on the front, see if reducing it helps turn in.

I really enjoyed driving your car. Think we might share a similar philosophy to set up - safety first.


Thanks Ramside - I will have a little tinker a bit later in the week and see what I can do.

I noticed that my front toe should actually read -0.2, rather than +0.2. Not much different, but this should help turn in a little.
 
The first thing I notice is the racing brakes on SH tyres.
I think you're trying to compromise a good tune to sort out an over-braked car.
if the brakes grab too fast it'll throw the weight forward too fast and make it unstable.
It might be counter intuitive, but it's something I've done before to settle a tail happy MR car.
Using lower brake strengths don;t slow the car as fast but as long as you're not locking the wheels, you can maintain braking while starting to steer at the apex.
But if you lock the tyres, you're done for. you need to get off them and you're now far too deep in the corner

I test braking strength by turning ABS to 0, and brake strength to minimum
then hard stopping on the flat.
increase the brake strength on the fronts until you can just lock them with very hard braking.
I then add in some rear to adjust the feel.

If i race with softer sports tyres I might increase the strength 1 or 2 clicks, or go less strength with Comfort tyres.

But I never use Racing brakes unless I'm using racing tyres.
 
The first thing I notice is the racing brakes on SH tyres.
I think you're trying to compromise a good tune to sort out an over-braked car.
if the brakes grab too fast it'll throw the weight forward too fast and make it unstable.
It might be counter intuitive, but it's something I've done before to settle a tail happy MR car.
Using lower brake strengths don;t slow the car as fast but as long as you're not locking the wheels, you can maintain braking while starting to steer at the apex.
But if you lock the tyres, you're done for. you need to get off them and you're now far too deep in the corner

I test braking strength by turning ABS to 0, and brake strength to minimum
then hard stopping on the flat.
increase the brake strength on the fronts until you can just lock them with very hard braking.
I then add in some rear to adjust the feel.

If i race with softer sports tyres I might increase the strength 1 or 2 clicks, or go less strength with Comfort tyres.

But I never use Racing brakes unless I'm using racing tyres.

That's a good shout, I'll try that.

I'm hoping that reducing the brakes will allow me to add rear damper extension back on.

This will in turn stiffen the back and remove a bit of understeer, without taking too much grip away from corner exit.

I can't wait to play around with this again, I need a clone so that I can spend more time playing while my double goes to work and fulfils my social obligations for me.
 
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Thanks Ramside - I will have a little tinker a bit later in the week and see what I can do.

I noticed that my front toe should actually read -0.2, rather than +0.2. Not much different, but this should help turn in a little.

It made a significant difference to turn in, I suggest you edit the post for those who find your tune via this thread.

The spring and damper tweaks worked out ok too. I went from 2:07.1 with the wrong toe to 2:05.4 after introducing all the changes.

I'm keeping this beauty, thanks for sharing.
 
It made a significant difference to turn in, I suggest you edit the post for those who find your tune via this thread.

The spring and damper tweaks worked out ok too. I went from 2:07.1 with the wrong toe to 2:05.4 after introducing all the changes.

I'm keeping this beauty, thanks for sharing.

Nice one, Glad you liked it!

Could you share what other tweaks you made to it? I'll take her out for a spin this evening..

It'll be a tough shout to get the lap times that you're doing, but I have to agree with you it's a really enjoyable drive, and for me that's good enough.
 
Sure.

Corrected toe to -0.20
Increased rear damper extension to 4
Lowered front spring rate to 6.48
Increased rear spring rate to 10.02

Your proper toe setting made his biggest individual improvement and best part of 20 laps driving of course. I finished off the session by going back to the original set up and would say the other 3 changes combined were worth 6 or 7 tenths to me.
 
Sure.

Corrected toe to -0.20
Increased rear damper extension to 4
Lowered front spring rate to 6.48
Increased rear spring rate to 10.02

Your proper toe setting made his biggest individual improvement and best part of 20 laps driving of course. I finished off the session by going back to the original set up and would say the other 3 changes combined were worth 6 or 7 tenths to me.

Sweet cheers. Did you actually go for -0.20 toe? I've just realised My fat fingers managed another typo, that should have been -0.02!

It might be worth trying winding the toe back a little to zero, but then again maybe I've accidentally improved the tune with bad typing.

I get to take her out for a spin again tomorrow, looking forward to trying your new improved settings 👍

I also started the tune at Apricot Hill with the same damper extension you have (4) but felt the back skipped about a bit, so reduced extension in an attempt to get the rear wheels to reach out to the floor quicker. I guess increasing the rear springs will have a similar affect.
 
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Sweet cheers. Did you actually go for -0.20 toe? I've just realised My fat fingers managed another typo, that should have been -0.02!

It might be worth trying winding the toe back a little to zero, but then again maybe I've accidentally improved the tune with bad typing.

I get to take her out for a spin again tomorrow, looking forward to trying your new improved settings 👍

I also started the tune at Apricot Hill with the same damper extension you have (4) but felt the back skipped about a bit, so reduced extension in an attempt to get the rear wheels to reach out to the floor quicker. I guess increasing the rear springs will have a similar affect.

Yes, I used -0.20 toe and it worked nicely with the front camber to help hit the apex. I felt I was fighting the steering wheel somewhat when turning with the original set up.

Re the dampers, they come into effect whenever you change a driving input - braking, accelerating, cornering.

I posted some notes I use for damper settings here.

I was assuming the issue you had with braking was due to the dramatic forward weight shift once you release the accelerator and hit the brakes. It's common with rear heavy cars and if the car isn't dead straight, the back end can swing round.

Stiffening rear extension slows the forward weight transfer off the rear spring so retaining some rear grip and making the car more manageable.

Soft springs give more grip, stiff springs less. The car is so stable under braking, I felt it could afford a little oversteer balance to help rotation through the corner and exit, hence softening the front for a little more grip and stiffening the rear for less grip.
 
Yes, I used -0.20 toe and it worked nicely with the front camber to help hit the apex. I felt I was fighting the steering wheel somewhat when turning with the original set up.

Re the dampers, they come into effect whenever you change a driving input - braking, accelerating, cornering.

I posted some notes I use for damper settings here.

I was assuming the issue you had with braking was due to the dramatic forward weight shift once you release the accelerator and hit the brakes. It's common with rear heavy cars and if the car isn't dead straight, the back end can swing round.

Stiffening rear extension slows the forward weight transfer off the rear spring so retaining some rear grip and making the car more manageable.

Soft springs give more grip, stiff springs less. The car is so stable under braking, I felt it could afford a little oversteer balance to help rotation through the corner and exit, hence softening the front for a little more grip and stiffening the rear for less grip.

Well thanks again @rams1de, if you don't mind I'm going to update my tune sheet, I'll add you in the credits.
 
From what I've read, understeer and oversteer are just as likely to occur because of driver inputs as they are the car setup. With a fairly neutral car, it's still possible for a driver to get the car to behave in these (sometimes) unwanted ways. 'Tuning your driving' is also a helpful way to alleviate these issues.

Try incorporating trail-braking into your driving habits as this may also help cure the understeer issue you have. Not to mention, it also means you can brake a lot later, carry more speed through the corner, and achieve lower laptimes as a result.
 
From what I've read, understeer and oversteer are just as likely to occur because of driver inputs as they are the car setup. With a fairly neutral car, it's still possible for a driver to get the car to behave in these (sometimes) unwanted ways. 'Tuning your driving' is also a helpful way to alleviate these issues.

Try incorporating trail-braking into your driving habits as this may also help cure the understeer issue you have. Not to mention, it also means you can brake a lot later, carry more speed through the corner, and achieve lower laptimes as a result.

I am starting to try trail braking, agreed it dramatically reduces lap times, but by nature of later braking also reduces margin for error.
Thus I'm building my tunes to be as forgiving and manageable as possible at this stage.
 
I am starting to try trail braking, agreed it dramatically reduces lap times, but by nature of later braking also reduces margin for error.
Thus I'm building my tunes to be as forgiving and manageable as possible at this stage.

It's not necessary to brake later in order to attempt trail-braking. This is only something which should be done gradually anyway, as you learn the track/car/yourself more and more. The trailing part of the braking can still be applied so that the car's weight remains over the front wheels during corner entry, increasing the tyre's contact patch with the road and therefore increasing overall front-end grip which alleviates understeer, to a certain degree.

I know that hearing something akin to "you're driving needs to improve" is a hard pill to swallow - so often we humans blame everything outside of ourselves without first looking internally for an answer - but I'm just trying to help. If I've offended you, that wasn't my intention.

Good luck with your car setup :D
 
It's not necessary to brake later in order to attempt trail-braking. This is only something which should be done gradually anyway, as you learn the track/car/yourself more and more. The trailing part of the braking can still be applied so that the car's weight remains over the front wheels during corner entry, increasing the tyre's contact patch with the road and therefore increasing overall front-end grip which alleviates understeer, to a certain degree.

I know that hearing something akin to "you're driving needs to improve" is a hard pill to swallow - so often we humans blame everything outside of ourselves without first looking internally for an answer - but I'm just trying to help. If I've offended you, that wasn't my intention.

Good luck with your car setup :D

Absolutely no offence taken!
 
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