- 36
- Lisboa/Portugal
- lupo_55
About close-ratio gear boxes
After analyzing all my personal tunes I came to a conclusion regarding gear box ratios that I decided to share with you.
But first let me say that - for racing purposes - I am a big fan of “close-ratio” gear boxes. On GT5 I tend to use, on almost every car, the already well known process of “maximize FD – minimize top speed – readjust FD to the desired top speed”.
But I noticed that, in many cases, that simple process sets the top speed – and sometimes even the previous one - with an overdrive ratio (< 1). That may still be OK when the ratio stays greater than say, 0.950, but in some cases it’ll be set too low (for my taste).
I don’t like overdrive gears for racing purposes. That was invented mainly to reduce fuel consumption on our regular, daily use, boring cars.
When it exists on race cars (at least on GT5), it’s only useful on circuits with looooong straights like Le Mans-Mulsanne (or… Daytona). Besides, this is the reason why LM cars are the ones having, not just one, but in some cases even two, overdrive top gears.
Most of the time, in the vast majority of GT5 circuits, we’d be better with a gear box that can take advantage of the power band of our car’s engine: one with close-ratio and with as many gears as possible.
I know what some of you may be thinking at this time: in manual, more gears means more work => more trouble (=> more… fun…?!). I agree!
But one thing is our human “weariness” and another is the undeniable fact (pls excuse my emphasis) that more speeds on the gear box allow a better utilization of the engine power and torque.
The point here being…
…try to determine a gear ratio spread that, on automatic, may allow us to use the break pedal to shift a gear down…
At least using a wheel – in my case a DFGT - that is very much feasible. More effectively with some cars (those with 7-speed gear boxes) than others (with 6 or less). Before the turn all I have to do is to briefly kick the break pedal thus shifting down one gear at a time.
So… the results of my analysis of the average gear settings and spreads (as GT5 sets them) of my (+100) tunes, mostly set to close-ratio are the following:
(here, decimal point is comma !)
Or, graphically...
The calculated settings to eliminate overdrive, by setting top speed to be direct (1:1) and incrementing the next ratio by nearly the same “drop percentage” as the initial settings, are:
(values rounded to the 2nd decimal for ease of use)
In some cases the range of values allowed by the game for the individual gears (namely for 1st and even 2nd gears) will not permit you to use the above (general) values. In those cases you may have to compromise a bit and give one or two clicks “to the right” on the max speed (increasing it) to get compliable ranges. Of course, when doing that you’ll be widening the total ratio spread, or in other words getting a... “not-so-close” gear box.
A final word to say that a simple way of getting rid off overdrive ratios is –after having maximized the Final Drive - to simply select a value for max speed that sets the top gear around 1,000 (thus, and again, obtaining a “not-so-close” gear box).
Note 1: The cars involved have power (and torque) more than enough to dismiss its consideration in the above reasoning; namely regarding the resultant efficiency of 1st gears (see note 2).
Note 2: 1st gear is very seldom used on GT5 events.
Note 3: This is a generalization founded on an average of many different cars; there are clearly “atypical” situations like f.i. the Bentley Speed 8 (and other LM cars!).
Note 4: I omitted the few 3, 4 & 8-speed cars due to its "irrelevancy" in the game..
After analyzing all my personal tunes I came to a conclusion regarding gear box ratios that I decided to share with you.
But first let me say that - for racing purposes - I am a big fan of “close-ratio” gear boxes. On GT5 I tend to use, on almost every car, the already well known process of “maximize FD – minimize top speed – readjust FD to the desired top speed”.
But I noticed that, in many cases, that simple process sets the top speed – and sometimes even the previous one - with an overdrive ratio (< 1). That may still be OK when the ratio stays greater than say, 0.950, but in some cases it’ll be set too low (for my taste).
I don’t like overdrive gears for racing purposes. That was invented mainly to reduce fuel consumption on our regular, daily use, boring cars.
When it exists on race cars (at least on GT5), it’s only useful on circuits with looooong straights like Le Mans-Mulsanne (or… Daytona). Besides, this is the reason why LM cars are the ones having, not just one, but in some cases even two, overdrive top gears.
Most of the time, in the vast majority of GT5 circuits, we’d be better with a gear box that can take advantage of the power band of our car’s engine: one with close-ratio and with as many gears as possible.
I know what some of you may be thinking at this time: in manual, more gears means more work => more trouble (=> more… fun…?!). I agree!
But one thing is our human “weariness” and another is the undeniable fact (pls excuse my emphasis) that more speeds on the gear box allow a better utilization of the engine power and torque.
The point here being…
…try to determine a gear ratio spread that, on automatic, may allow us to use the break pedal to shift a gear down…
At least using a wheel – in my case a DFGT - that is very much feasible. More effectively with some cars (those with 7-speed gear boxes) than others (with 6 or less). Before the turn all I have to do is to briefly kick the break pedal thus shifting down one gear at a time.
So… the results of my analysis of the average gear settings and spreads (as GT5 sets them) of my (+100) tunes, mostly set to close-ratio are the following:
(here, decimal point is comma !)
Or, graphically...
The calculated settings to eliminate overdrive, by setting top speed to be direct (1:1) and incrementing the next ratio by nearly the same “drop percentage” as the initial settings, are:
(values rounded to the 2nd decimal for ease of use)
In some cases the range of values allowed by the game for the individual gears (namely for 1st and even 2nd gears) will not permit you to use the above (general) values. In those cases you may have to compromise a bit and give one or two clicks “to the right” on the max speed (increasing it) to get compliable ranges. Of course, when doing that you’ll be widening the total ratio spread, or in other words getting a... “not-so-close” gear box.
A final word to say that a simple way of getting rid off overdrive ratios is –after having maximized the Final Drive - to simply select a value for max speed that sets the top gear around 1,000 (thus, and again, obtaining a “not-so-close” gear box).
Note 1: The cars involved have power (and torque) more than enough to dismiss its consideration in the above reasoning; namely regarding the resultant efficiency of 1st gears (see note 2).
Note 2: 1st gear is very seldom used on GT5 events.
Note 3: This is a generalization founded on an average of many different cars; there are clearly “atypical” situations like f.i. the Bentley Speed 8 (and other LM cars!).
Note 4: I omitted the few 3, 4 & 8-speed cars due to its "irrelevancy" in the game..
(don't we all ?!
)
