suspension tuning explained from an expert

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bubba blackmeat

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Having spent over 10 years in the vehicle tuning & racing business, i thought i'd give you guys some info that i have learned regarding lowering rideheights, camber, springrates, dampers and toe angle for roadcars and trackday cars, which also apply and work very well in gt4.

LOWERING (RIDEHIGHT), 40mm drop is the golden rule. Most (80%) vehicles respond best to this, as you will see in gt4 not many cars will go lower than this but there are exeptions to this rule, like a rear-engined rear-drive car 25-30mm is better in the rears there due to weightshift on accelaration. so in gt4 if its F.F. F.R. OR M.R. ALWAYS drop buy 40mm or as close as the scale will allow.

CAMBER. (mesured in degrees 1.0 and minutes 0.1) when it comes to camber in gt4 (all measured in negative camber by the way there is no positive camber in gt4 i dont think) 3.0 to 4.0 in the front is best for all front engined cars, you can half that figure if the engines weight is mid or rear. 1.0 to 2.0 is best in the rear for all cars. In the real world though any aggressive camber is very bad for roadcar tyre wear as 85% of roadcar usage is almost striaght ahead driving, compaired to track usage which is 80% cornering. YOUR WHEELS SHOULD BE ANGLED LIKE THIS IN OTHERWORDS http://www.autosport.nl/2004/mediabank/images/172_verschuur-zaterdag.jpg

SPRINGRATES. im used to lbs/inch not gt4's kg/mm but it goes like this no more than 30% stiffer is the norm for 40mm drop simple as that (remember you are gonna lighten the car so that 30% will feel more like 50% stiffer when the weight comes off).

DAMPERS. the scrolling text at the bottom of the setting screen for this expains it all. I won't go into to much depth but gt4's dampers 8/8 8/8 are way off and MUCH to strong, 3/6 at engine end and 3/6 or even 2/4 at the lighter (non engine end) is much more realistic the lighter the car the less you need. (a caterham fully lightend and tuned in the game responds very well to 1/1 1/1)

TOE. (mesured in degrees 1.0 and minutes 0.1) TOE MESS WITH TOE IN(--)/OUT(+) AT YOUR PERIL IT EATS TYRES -- front + rear feels skittish in the straights + front -- rear feels understeery in the corners, but if it still won't corner try a little -- up front and + at the rear.

any other ??? let me know. :) :)
 
Absolutely fantastic info! :bowdown: Thank you very much Bubba Blackmeat 👍


Can I use this to make a car turn better, like the Corvette Z06? This car is really hard to turn compared with other racing cars, I find that odd, so is there a setting that can improve it or are the other racing cars better and there is nothing I can do? :confused:


Also, how about the Saleen, it won't brake :scared: Any settings to help cars brake faster?

Thank again :cheers:
 
I imagine these are ideal settings for a race setup, as opposed to a drifting setup? Nonetheless, interesting information, if i remember to i will give it a try this weekend on some of my race cars.
 
Zoom GT4
Absolutely fantastic info! :bowdown: Thank you very much Bubba Blackmeat 👍


Can I use this to make a car turn better, like the Corvette Z06? This car is really hard to turn compared with other racing cars, I find that odd, so is there a setting that can improve it or are the other racing cars better and there is nothing I can do? :confused:


Also, how about the Saleen, it won't brake :scared: Any settings to help cars brake faster?

Thank again :cheers:
Click to expand...

Follow the link in my sig for help with stopping your Saleen.
 
bubba blackmeat
LOWERING (RIDEHIGHT), 40mm drop is the golden rule. Most (80%) vehicles respond best to this, as you will see in gt4 not many cars will go lower than this but there are exeptions to this rule, like a rear-engined rear-drive car 25-30mm is better there due to weightshift on accelaration. so in gt4 if its F.F. F.R. OR M.R. ALWAYS drop buy 40mm or as close as the scale will allow.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'll try it as soon as I play GT4 again, one question though. How about 4WD cars? Is it the same as the cars you mentioned?

Basje
 
Zoom GT4
Can I use this to make a car turn better, like the Corvette Z06? This car is really hard to turn compared with other racing cars
Click to expand...

i think it can be fixed yes but if it is already a race car my settings might not work (they work on a street car that YOU are converting to a track racer NOT a car that you obtained as a track car in the first place) so try this...

default the suspension and driving aids off and max downforce front and rear then test the car if it is'nt handling like you want it to then try this..(i guess its washingout to the outer kerb(understeering) mid turn when you put the power down)

first try this, go to the diff settings and put them at 5/5/5 so its like not having an limited slip (it might be to strong and just pushing the car striaght on) and adjust taction control to 1 if that dosn't work default the diff again and try this..

leave the spring rate as it is
lower by 20mm all round
dampers 6/3 front and 4/2 rear the text at the bottom will tell you which to put higher but larger (stronger settings at the engine end/front)
camber 4.0 front 1.5 at the rear
toe both 0.0 0.0 (you might need to adjust this later if all else fails)
anti roll bars at 6 front 6 rear
driving aids can be your best weapon try 0/5/0 or 0/10/0 or 0/15/0 or even 0/20/0 if 0/10/0 is still understeery but 0/15/0 is too tail happy then try fine tuning it like 0/12/0, 0/13/0 if you feel like its spinning the wheels mid turn until you exit the corner try a 1 or 2 on the traction control. if its still washing out try --toe up front( / \ ) + toe in the rear ( \ / ) as the car's weight is shifting on the turn
the toe angle will help it even more to turn

you could mess with the diff settings but DONT i never do in the game just a 1 on the traction control is enough.

194GVan
I imagine these are ideal settings for a race setup, as opposed to a drifting setup? Nonetheless, interesting information, if i remember to i will give it a try this weekend on some of my race cars.
Click to expand...

try my setup on a a max tuned rs200 road car with driving aids at 0/10/0 add downforce to max and racing/hard or super hard tyres all round its a brilliant car to learn to do fast, consistent,drifts in, free run 10 laps of grand vally normal or apricot hill normal and you'll love it everyone should give this one a go.

basje_1
How about 4WD cars? Is it the same as the cars you mentioned?
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oh sorry i must have missed them sorry, but yes ABSOLUTLY they'll work great probubly the best infact.

thanks guys for all your great comments i just knew loads of folks either wer'nt adjusting the suspensions at all or were just maxing everything out and getting bad results ....... just thought i'd share my knowlege with you all
 
I usually go for the following settings when using racing suspension:

SPRINGRATES: i keep these on default setting
RIDEHEIGHT: i set this to 10mm above the absolute minimum
DAMPERS: 7/9 on both front and rear
CAMBER: default (usually 2.0/1.0)
TOE: i dont even mess with these...
ANTIROLL BARS: 5/5

this usually works out well with most cars...

but i have these two cars that just wont work with me...
a Mazda RX-7 type RZ (FD, J) ´96 and a Toyota Supra RZ '97.
both of them are very unstable at high speeds, and when i brake they act like RR cars... the slightest change in direction will make them spin around completely...

now, ive tried fiddling around with the suspension, driving aids, breakbalance and lsd, but to no avail... i even tried your settings but still the same problem..

got any good advice on this?
maby you could buy that RX-7 (thats the one ive got most trouble with) and try tuning it to your liking... (or just see if im a bad driver... :crazy: )
 
Oddball_E8
I usually go for the following settings when using racing suspension:

SPRINGRATES: i keep these on default setting
RIDEHEIGHT: i set this to 10mm above the absolute minimum
DAMPERS: 7/9 on both front and rear
CAMBER: default (usually 2.0/1.0)
TOE: i dont even mess with these...
ANTIROLL BARS: 5/5

this usually works out well with most cars...

but i have these two cars that just wont work with me...
a Mazda RX-7 type RZ (FD, J) ´96 and a Toyota Supra RZ '97.
both of them are very unstable at high speeds, and when i brake they act like RR cars... the slightest change in direction will make them spin around completely...

now, ive tried fiddling around with the suspension, driving aids, breakbalance and lsd, but to no avail... i even tried your settings but still the same problem..

got any good advice on this?
maby you could buy that RX-7 (thats the one ive got most trouble with) and try tuning it to your liking... (or just see if im a bad driver... :crazy: )
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That could well be a brake bias issue, if your rear tyres are locking up first under hard braking and you even look at the steering slightly wrong it will break out the back.

What settings are you running for brake balance? Make sure they are not set to high (as this will cause the brakes to lock quickly) and ensure they have a slight bias towards the front.

Take a look at the link in my sig, in the first post you will see a link to a StopTech white paper on brake bias settings, take a look at that.
 
if i do ever up the brakes on my cars in the game i never go up that far 12 front 9 rear at the MAXIMUM....scaff your absolutly right about the tyres though......in real life cars if your brakes can skid your front tyres and your happy with the brake pedal travel then your brakes are doing there job just fine.....

ever noticed that in gt4 there seems to be "no such thing" as brake fade.... strange as thats one of the main reasons for fitting vented,crossdrilled and grooved disks

i like my brakes a 65%/35% split front/rear

ODDBALL F8.... try this, its funny but it might work...... stick a "dead body in the boot" or "junk in the trunk" this is what i did in my ruf btr. im of avarage build for a 6 foot bloke so i weighed myself on my bathroom scales and i weight 86kg so i put that in my at ruf's boot (--45 in the front in this case) MY GOD the handling was transformed, it might just work on the rufs with there fly-away light front ends buy stabalizing the weight transfer under braking seriously though in your case what i thinks happening is the backend is getting VERY light and locking slightly ,so its like ripping the handbrake up. try lots of rear downforce and none on the front like 0/25 or 0/30 and adjust the brakes to 10/6 front/rear or slightly less maybe 5/3 front/rear
 
Well, thanks to this post, thanks to you, I just drove my TVR Tamora round Deep Forest the fastest i have ever managed. Thanks! :tup
 
well ive tried putting most of the braking power to the front... and ive even tried the opposite... to no avail...

i also tried having no brake bias controller.. same thing...
im at a loss...

but ill sit down tonite and try the weight distribution thing and the downforce...
 
bubba blackmeat
leave the spring rate as it is
lower by 20mm all round
dampers 6/3 front and 4/2 rear the text at the bottom will tell you which to put higher but larger (stronger settings at the engine end/front)
camber 4.0 front 1.5 at the rear
toe both 0.0 0.0 (you might need to adjust this later if all else fails)
anti roll bars at 6 front 6 rear
Click to expand...
Do you actually test other settings or is there no need. Just curious because I spend hours robotically testing cars running a lap with one thing changed one click comparing it to my best lap ghost and I NEVER get better lap times with any car over 3.0 front camber, for that matter I never run a car with as low as 1.5 rear camber...so I was hoping you could back the superlatives with some hard data, say compare a car you tuned with 2.8 front camber to its superior tune at +3 front camber and post those tunes so I and possibly others could find out what we are doing wrong.

bubba blackmeat
driving aids can be your best weapon try 0/5/0 or 0/10/0 or 0/15/0 or even 0/20/0 if 0/10/0 is still understeery but 0/15/0 is too tail happy then try fine tuning it like 0/12/0, 0/13/0 if you feel like its spinning the wheels mid turn until you exit the corner try a 1 or 2 on the traction control.
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Also, I think most of the seasoned tuners that post here agree that ASM amounts to a learning aid since it robs vital characteristics to perform its role. I think the phenomenon is summed up very well here:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showpost.php?p=1543427&postcount=16
Perhaps you could review the post and illuminate us.
It is a fact of GT4 that it is relatively easy to make a few simple adjustments and get better performance than original. To actually take real world experience and convert it into truly good tunes without re-learning the GT4 physics engine would completely amaze the most experienced posters like ///M-Spec and Greyout.
 
aah yes aarque but my first post is real world setting transformed into gt4 settings, that i must say seem to work out nicely in the game too.
remember 5 years of extensive research went into gt4, one example is that the entire nurburgring is accurate to 15mm at any point on the track...

the same goes for real cars and the ones in the game, there just a metal box 9 foot buy 6 foot full of maths and physics. becouse i'v spent near half my life setting up the real thing (there's probubly loads of folks out there who have never touched a mig welder and got there hands dirty making adjustable lower suspenion arms for mrk2 ford xr2 for a bit of --camber im just passing on the knowlage i know from the real things) i'v just transported these setting from the real into gt4 and they seemed to work.

as other people have been posting handling issues with the cars they really WANT to drive quickly and cleanly, im only advising them how they could maybe sort the problem of understeer and weightshift ..... i wouldnt be surprised if 50% of the cars in the game will have handling issues of some kind without any assists on at all ...... no point just binning these cars just becouse of a bit of inherent understeer.

from what i know of automatic stability managment systems they use throttle control as can be experienced when having it on in game like a 4wd set at 0/20/0 will keep on accelarating through a corner when you are not touching the throttle a bit of a wierd feeling at first

skylines might be big, fat and full of wires but boy are thay fast in the twisty stuff

lsd's can also be considerd a learning aid too then cos' if the wheels are spinning too much without one then the driver is obviusly dialing in to much power too soon for the inside tyre to cope with.
 
Oddball_E8
ill sit down tonite and try the weight distribution thing and the downforce...
Click to expand...
i would try the downforce first ..... the weight in the back might make it worse. but just tune to your taste i tryed the supra today and it wasnt that bad but its all down to YOUR taste for handling.
 
Oddball_E8
well ive tried putting most of the braking power to the front... and ive even tried the opposite... to no avail...

i also tried having no brake bias controller.. same thing...
im at a loss...

but ill sit down tonite and try the weight distribution thing and the downforce...
Click to expand...


The brake force will need to be set fairly low, particularly with regard to the RX-7, and you should never have a strong bias in any one direction.

Try Front 4 Rear 3 or Front 5 Rear 4, and remember maximum deceleration from the tyres in rarely achieved at 100% braking force, you just lock the wheels.

Give that a go
 
bubba blackmeat
aah yes aarque but my first post is real world setting transformed into gt4 settings, that i must say seem to work out nicely in the game too.
remember 5 years of extensive research went into gt4, one example is that the entire nurburgring is accurate to 15mm at any point on the track...

the same goes for real cars and the ones in the game, there just a metal box 9 foot buy 6 foot full of maths and physics. becouse i'v spent near half my life setting up the real thing (there's probubly loads of folks out there who have never touched a mig welder and got there hands dirty making adjustable lower suspenion arms for mrk2 ford xr2 for a bit of --camber im just passing on the knowlage i know from the real things) i'v just transported these setting from the real into gt4 and they seemed to work.
Click to expand...
:lol: Well I suppose we will have to settle for more superlatives then, who the heck needs hard data anyway?
If you are up to the challenge, read this entire thread:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=57763
the most senior posters here all weighed in on it, although they haven't felt the need to comment in this thread, oddly. I myself learned MOUNDS of ideas and information about game tuning. Of course, reading it all it could take a while, much time and effort went into the threshing of data, excellent and brilliant posts by expert real world tuners, engineers and racers...in light of that, it is almost supernatural how easily tuning GT4 cars came to you...
 
:) :) supernatural i could only wish dude..... 5 years making tea and coffee in the pits at knockhill racing circuit and cowdenbeath racewall, listening and learning around the real things before i was 16, 3 years in collage and 8 years hands on in the motor trade also in my spare time modifying cars and building my own freestyle kitcar, more than 20 scars on my right hand alone from being young and stupid with hammers, i also nearly lost my thumb and index finger to an angle grinder whilst fabricaring my own hydrogas suspension pump..... supernatural learning would have been nice though
 
bubba blackmeat
i would try the downforce first ..... the weight in the back might make it worse. but just tune to your taste i tryed the supra today and it wasnt that bad but its all down to YOUR taste for handling.
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ah, well i should explain that im driving with the controler... not a wheel... that makes alot of difference imho...
 
well... that sorted it!

i used my standard suspension setup (as explained earlier) and a brake bias of 4/3... set the downforce to 0/30 and off i went... smoothe as a babys bottom it was!
well... not really, but smoothe enough... the braking distance was still a bit long, but thats probarbly just because ive been spoiled by the Mercedes SL65 AMG... that thing has the best brakes ever!

but thanx for the advice everyone... ill be getting to that supra now...

but first i have to fix my friends Honda S2000... for some reason its veering to the right sometimes... theres no apparent explanation for it either... same setup as i always use... and no "body damage" yet... oh well... wish me luck!
 
bubba blackmeat
DAMPERS. the scrolling text at the bottom of the setting screen for this expains it all. I won't go into to much depth but gt4's dampers 8/8 8/8 are way off and MUCH to strong, 6/3 at engine end and 4/2 at the lighter (non engine end) is much more realistic the lighter the car the less you need. (a caterham fully lightend and tuned in the game responds very well to 1/1 1/1)
Click to expand...


ummm... you say 6/3 and 4/2, but in the games scrolling text they say that the latter number can be set much higher than the first... have you just flipped them around?
wich one is bound and wich one is rebound of the 6/3??
 
yes your correct .... my mistake you want the wheel to travel more quickly as it hits a bump so bounce is the lesser number but rebound stronger to soak up the energy stored in the spring on the way back down so that's the greater number. i just could'nt remember which way round they were listed in the settings menu. "DONK" my b-spec'er was busy at el capitan doing some fund raising so i could'nt check it at the time of wrighting.... i have made the adjustments to my original post thats why i put ........"the scrolling text at the bottom of the setting screen for this expains it all"....... becouse i could'nt remember which came first in the setup menu
 
bubba blackmeat
..... 5 years making tea and coffee in the pits at knockhill racing circuit and cowdenbeath racewall, listening and learning around the real things before i was 16, 3 years in collage and 8 years hands on in the motor trade also in my spare time modifying cars and building my own freestyle kitcar, more than 20 scars on my right hand alone from being young and stupid with hammers, i also nearly lost my thumb and index finger to an angle grinder whilst fabricaring my own hydrogas suspension pump.....
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Well it's clear you have a life, congratulations, although I don't see a lick of experience in simulations or coding suspension algorithms, but heck, I am sure the software engineers have solved that for us, no doubt there are perfect minature replica Audi's and Merc's running around inside our Playstations (on that perfect little Nurburgring), eh? And it appears that you have learned all you need to know, because you obviously didn't heed my advice and read the thread about suspension tuning discrepencies, or you would understand that real world theory only loosely translates to Gran Turismo 4...and let's see, did your suspension pump have anything to do with issues over cavitation in traditional suspension fluids?
 
aarque
did your suspension pump have anything to do with issues over cavitation in traditional suspension fluids?
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nope i just refused to pay £300 for a BL hydrogas inflation and leveling unit for my own use on my MG Metro turbo when i was modifying the suspesion 10 years ago, so i made my own from a transit van brake master cylinder stolen from the brakersyard crazy thing is it really works well..... still have it in my shed outside.
 
Your explanation of how to set up dampers (and that 8/8 was too stiff) absolutely salvaged some very stubborn FR cars. I was so happy to have my Callaway C12 TURN! Thank you!
 

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