does brake balance do anything?

[TruenoAE86]

I’m getting pretty frustrated with the tuning in GT4. Now I’m not saying it wrong or bad, maybe I’m just not good enough at it to see the difference but some things just seem wrong. Basically I’m trying to get my cars the handle more like in gt3 mainly trying to get at least some predictable oversteer under heavy braking. Usually what I get from FR cars is just plain understeer under any type of braking. The first thing I tried was playing with the brake balance. In gt 3 if the front was set to 24 and the rear at 2 the car would be extremely stable and understeer when braking and when the front was set to 2 and the rear at 24 it was the complete opposite. In gt4…well I can’t tell the difference between 1 f, 24 r and 24f, 1r. I tried all types of bound and re-bound settings played with LSD deceleration at extremes. I have had some luck with extreme camber angles on the rear wheels but that’s about it.

In the end my questions is this. Shouldn’t it be easier to totally upset the balance of the car? Shouldn’t slight changes make a big difference?

Note: I find MR car much more sensitive to setting changes but I find FR car totally unresponsive, well at least the RX-8 and SS trueno seem to be these are the only 2 that I have really put some time into trying to tune.

Any thoughts or advice?

 

[Super Jamie]

it does make a difference, but you need to be gripping through the corner, which is the problem in gt4 as it's understeer city. try slowing down a bit, cornering on the limit then braking

try a good drift setup (like bryanh's gt3 gran dorifto FC which you can find on gamefaqs.com) and reverse the brake balance, and you won't be able to get the arse out under brakes

or maybe try with a race setup on a long sweeping corner like the straight after the tunnel on midfield reverse

 

[rk]

ASM provides control at the expense of response. Most likely you will get better results from tuning, brake balance is VERY sensetive, btw, after turning it down or off.

 

[gsavill90]

Too much braking power on the front causes Oversteer, Too much on the back causes understeer. I usually have two more at the front than at the back.

 

[Swift]

I also noticed that having the balance set to high in both the front and rear, say 16/18 can cause worse braking. I noticed this first in my Subaru Prodrive and then in the 350Z. I'm not sure of the technical reasoning, but when I lowered my balance to 12/10 I my braking distances shortened and my control became much better.

 

[Iceman]

I set the brake balance very low on the LMP cars. At anything above 7 or so, many start skidding their tires under full braking.

 

[TruenoAE86]

Too much braking power on the front causes Oversteer, Too much on the back causes understeer. I usually have two more at the front than at the back.

I'm not sure this is true, think of it this way, 0 % front and 100% back is like pulling the hand brake and we all know what that does. Also if you read the description at the bottom of the screen in gt4 at the brake settings it says the exact opposite of what you said.

Anyways back to my point, maybe it brake balance does do something, but shouldn’t completely opposite settings i.e. 24f, 1r and 1f, 24r have completely different characteristics? Shouldn’t the difference me HUGE, as opposed to only sometimes and under certain circumstances? Did PD make a mistake or is this how brake balance is supposed to affect the car? Anyways I’m going to do some more testing to see if I can feel difference more.

Edit: Someone mentioned ASM... just to be clear I have ASM and TCS set to zero

 

[Greyout]

Too much braking power on the front causes Oversteer, Too much on the back causes understeer. I usually have two more at the front than at the back.

um no

 

[Duke]

I also noticed that having the balance set to high in both the front and rear, say 16/18 can cause worse braking. I noticed this first in my Subaru Prodrive and then in the 350Z. I'm not sure of the technical reasoning, but when I lowered my balance to 12/10 I my braking distances shortened and my control became much better.

In GT3, I was pretty firmly convinced that the absolute numbers didn't affect the overall braking force; in other words, 6/6 was the same as 12/12 was the same as 24/24. It was strictly a method of carefully proportioning the braking force but it always added up to 100%.

However, in GT4 I'm becoming convinced that the absolute numbers do affect the amount of braking force. So that 6/6, while balanced equally front and rear, has much less braking force than 24/24.

One other thing to remember: even if that isn't true, mis-balanced brakes can definitely increase your stopping distances. If you had too much rear brake bias at 12/12, then the impending lockup for the rears was reached well before the fronts were fully utilized, meaning you were not braking at maximum efficiency. So reducing the amount of braking force sent to the rear means that you get all four tires closer to the limits of adhesion at the same time, for maximum efficiency and shorter brake distances.

 

[rk]

I recommend you keep researching. I have found cars that brake best JUST off the default settings, maybe 3/4, and believe me when I say I tried the full range. I had a "little is good, more is better" attitude on the whole brake balance thing, up around 20, but gradually, mostly by reading from posters I have come to respect, I have brought my ranges lower. At this point, I have no set pattern to offer, but most cars, for me, seem to brake best say aaaround 10, very loosely, some as high as 15/16 and many, like I say, 7 or less. I advise you start at 3 and go upwards in 2 click increments until performance degrades. Tune in, then adjust desired balance from there. The first hairpin at Deep forest is an excellent place to test them, you can pick a brake marker and very easily measure distances.

 

[Flattyre]

I set the brake balance very low on the LMP cars. At anything above 7 or so, many start skidding their tires under full braking
.

If you have both settings too high then the limiting factor on braking distances is the tyre's grip, not the brakes themselves.

 

[pinball1973]

Racing brakes and brake balance control are the first things I install on every car. I've found that it dramatically reduces braking distances and increases braking force but that the results vary widely from car to car. In fact I might go so far to say that the bbc is one of the most significant alterations you can make to a stock car.

As someone mentioned above LMP and most factory race cars I only increase the brake balance setting a few notches, maybe 6/6 max. My Shelby Cobra on the other hand has something like 13/13 and still doesn't feel totally comfortable under heavy braking.

I've seen settings posted with a ridiculously high brake balance settings but I've never considered this to have a positive result unless you're looking for a drift setting. You didn't mention whether you were using DS2 or DFP but I think the brake setting are remarkably more visible with the wheel and pedals.

 

[PurdueKev]

The brake balance absolutely has an effect for me, though often I have found it can be masked by LSD decel, or other suspension settings that are affecting corner entry.

As far as the absolute value of the brake settings, most of my cars I have found won't tolerate really high brake settings before the ABS starts screaming at me. Most my garage is set to somewhere in the 6-8 range or even lower (a few exceptions)...