Mazda Miata Owner's Club [MMOC] - Tuning Guide

  • Thread starter MX5Racer69
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MX5Racer69
Placeholder for tuning suggestions for all the Miatas in the game. Hope this will be of use to folks in the early phases of the game when they need a low hp momentum car. More to come.
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Will you be updating the OP yourself? I highly suggest you do this as you might have a lot of support from the thread watchers.
Looking good so far!
 
kolio123
Will you be updating the OP yourself? I highly suggest you do this as you might have a lot of support from the thread watchers.
Looking good so far!
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I will. Maybe I can use the first post to link to the tunes added to this thread as we go along ... kind of like a table of contents. Thanks for the support guys.
 
Yes that sounds like the best way to do it.

I love Miata's myself for some odd reason(?)! I will be very happy to share settings and tips when I get free time in GT6.
 
@MX5Racer69 is this going to be a Club? If so have one of the guys to move there. I'll know where to come to now to have the Miata's set for the UMCDD.

Never mind its already there.

I see it happening that's why I asked @MX5Racer69
 
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Zuel
@MX5Racer69 is this going to be a Club? If so have one of the guys to move there. I'll know where to come to now to have the Miata's set for the UMCDD.
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Wasn't planning on starting a club. For now, having a tuning thread and participating in the Spec Miata series will be enough to keep me happy. But we will see. You never know.
 
mika012397
GTFO you 1000+ HP noob lol :D.
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To be fair, one of my favorite cars in GT5 was a hybrid Miata that I commissioned, that was powered by a tuned Furai engine that produced a bit over a thousand horsepower. Never have I found a car that was more involved to drive. Had to be on my toes 101% of the time, but that's why it was so fun.
 
Mazda Miata Roadster RS (NC) '07

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The following tune makes the following assumptions:

1.) All performance parts are installed (except aero, flat bottom or weight reduction.)
2.) Sport soft tires
3.) Relatively smooth track

Suspension

  • Ride Height: 92F 92R
  • Spring Rate: 6.0F 6.25R
  • Dampers (Comp): 3F 4R
  • Dampers (Ext): 3F 4R
  • Anti-Roll: 5F 6R
  • Camber: 1.3F 1.3R
  • Toe: 0F 0.16R
  • Brake Balance: 3F 5R

Drivetrain Transmission (No changes, other than install of fully customizable)

Drivetrain

Differential Gear
  • - Initial Torque 20
  • - Acceleration Sensitivity 45
  • - Braking Sensitivity 25

Clutch & Flywheel - upgraded
Drive Shaft - upgraded

Power

All upgraded.

Body

No Changes

Drivers Notes:

Test Time: Cape Ring Inside - 55.477

With all the power parts installed and a supercharger, the 07 NC Miata packs 357hp and weighs in at 1100kg. That gives a power to weight ratio of 3.08 kg/HP. And with those kind of numbers, folks might call it a girly car once. But after being passed a couple times, they will think again.

Tuning this car has gotten a lot harder in GT6. The work they did with the tire and suspension folks has paid off. And now, every little tweak seems to affect the other settings on the car. For that reason, I spent almost 6 hours on this tune tweaking one setting after another until I could not lower my lap times anymore. The general approach was to get the center of gravity lowered first, and then dial in everything to match. But that turned out to be problematic. And later I discovered that I would go faster with a little more ride height.

In the end, I ended up with a tune that I think is a compromise between flat out go-cart like handling and settings that are a little more forgiving. The ride height has been raised a bit and the suspension softened from earlier test values to induce a little more oversteer. Overall, I found that on the long sweepers, if I was smooth, that these settings resulted in an almost equal heating of the outside tires (with a slight weight towards the front tires to compensate for the heat generated in the rears under power). Likewise, the camber is relatively minimal due to testing that seemed to favor less camber on the short track (Cape Ring Inside).

In summary, this is a tune that I think will work well on smooth tracks without a lot of bumps. And, since the suspension is more stiff than the stock one, it is a little less forgiving. So drivers using this tune should really try to keep it smooth and avoid the curbing if at all possible. Hope you find those lost tenths of a second out there. And if you like the tune, please let me know.

MX
 
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Nice job MX5. I'm looking forward to giving your tune a drive! :cheers:
 
MX5Racer69
So did you try it out? Any feedback? What worked for you and what didn't you like? I'm curious.
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Yeah I ran 3-4 laps around Ascari with it. Everything seemed ok, but it might be a bit soft in the spring rate department. That's not to say that makes it bad, I thought it handled ok on sport hards. (I thought SS tires were too much grip for my tastes) 👍
 
R1600Turbo
Yeah I ran 3-4 laps around Ascari with it. Everything seemed ok, but it might be a bit soft in the spring rate department. That's not to say that makes it bad, I thought it handled ok on sport hards. (I thought SS tires were too much grip for my tastes) 👍
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Cool, thanks for the feedback. I'm always second guessing myself. I'll try it again later with stiffer springs again. I tried it harder once before and the car seemed to transfer all the energy very quickly to the outside tires making them heat up too quickly on the big sweepers. But I tweaked so many things so many times, I think there is value in trying a few more micro adjustments.

SpecMiata-JSW
Nice job MX5. I'm looking forward to giving your tune a drive! :cheers:
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What's up Spec? Fancy meeting you here. :)
 
Wardez, it's tough to say if I'll be doing too much league stuff. I just don't have time to practice. I'm enjoying offline GT6 at the moment because I can come and go as I please. I've done very little driving (sim and real) recently, so I'm as rusty as they come. We'll see how things progress and what kind of time I have in the future.

Great thread MX5, I'll be hanging around to see what you've got cooking with all things Miata. 👍
 
SpecMiata-JSW
Wardez, it's tough to say if I'll be doing too much league stuff. I just don't have time to practice. I'm enjoying offline GT6 at the moment because I can come and go as I please. I've done very little driving (sim and real) recently, so I'm as rusty as they come. We'll see how things progress and what kind of time I have in the future.

Great thread MX5, I'll be hanging around to see what you've got cooking with all things Miata. 👍
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Roger that. By the way Spec, back in the day ... seeing the photos of you in the Spec Miata was a huge influence on me to buy the MX5. I used to be an S2000 guy until I started reading about the Miatas. Been happy with mine ever since. Hope you find some time to join us online sometime.
 
MX5Racer69
Welcome to the home of Miata Tuning. Click the links below to see specific tunes.
Tuning Method: BTree Search Algorithm

The method I've used to come up with these tunes is a variant of the computer programming algorithm called the BTree Search Algorithm. In a nutshell, if you have a list of items in sorted order, you can search that list for a specific value by consecutively dividing the list and comparing the value at that location to the value you are looking for. If the value at that location is greater than your search value, you split the difference backwards. If it's less, you split the difference forward. And so on. In the worst case, you find your search value in N/2 searches.

With tuning a car, we do the same thing. But instead of searching a list, we are searching for tenths of a second on track. We begin with a baseline measurement taking the stock Miata, bolting on all the performance parts but with no tuning. This means taking a car with all the parts installed but in their default values including Comfort Soft tires. I install all the power parts, the suspension parts, the drivetrain parts, LSD, everything. Then I take the car out on a small track and do some laps. Once I have my fastest time, that becomes the baseline.

Now that we have a baseline, it's time to start experimenting. First thing we need to do is lower the center of gravity. Take the ride height and divide it in half. Then take the car out on the track. If it's faster, then it helped. If it's slower, we need to go the opposite direction. In the case that it was faster, we then split the difference between our current setting and the min setting again. Then we test again. And so on. As soon as we begin to be slower, we start moving back up until we once again hit our fastest time.

The problem here is that ride height and spring stiffness are tied to one another. So to solve this problem, we have to begin btree-ing the springs. Stiffen the springs ... then do some laps. If it needs to be stiffer, split the difference. If it needs to be softer, split the difference. At this point, there is some micro-tuning we need to do. Here is where I really learned a lot about tuning the car. As you are doing laps, keep a good eye on the tire temperatures. Ignore heating due to mistakes, but look at the tires on clean turns. If the front tires are heating up more than the rears, add some stiffness to the rear. And vice versa. Once you find the stiffness that gives the fastest lap times, hate to say it, but we're not done. It's kind of like tuning a guitar. Once you tighten one string, the other strings get a little looser. Same is true here. So the last bit is to tweak the ride height one more time. Instead of doing a btree search again, just do a small adjustment one way or the other. If it gets faster, keep it. If it gets slower, go the other direction. All the while, keep an eye on the tire temperatures and adjust as before.

Once we have ride height and springs, everything else is just micro adjustments. You can do the btree method if you like. Or you can just increment in fixed amounts and see what happens. The first thing I tried next was setting the toe back to zero. What I noticed was that the car immediately became much more unstable. It was able to rotate easier. However, every time I tried to accelerate out of a corner, the backend would swing around. I ended up putting it back to .20 and later micro adjusting it down to .16.

Next up was camber. With comfort soft tires, I knew I wouldn't have to go very far to find the optimum. I ended up with 1.5's front and back. However, I knew that I wanted to optimize the tunes for sport soft tires. So I experimented with 2's, 3's, 4's and 5's. After much experimentation, I found that 1.6 was best.

Then it was time to test the sway bars. At this point I was concerned that any extra stiffness was going to send us over the limit. But I was surprised to learn that the car got faster. So again, I tried various stiffnesses and watched the tire temperatures. I ended up going stiffer in the rear despite my desire to not do so. I wanted to leave the rear softer so that it would be more forgiving on corner exit under full power. But the tire temps don't lie.

Once the sways were set, it was time for the dampeners. Again, we're making small adjustments at this point. I added a little more stiffness to the rear again to help with the front tire heat during cornering.

The final piece of the puzzle was the LSD. I lowered the sensitivity and did a few laps. Times got worse. I raised the sensitivity and I got faster. Boom. Then I tried bumping up the acceleration and braking values. Again, I got faster. Voila.

That in a nutshell is how I come up with these tunes. Enjoy.

List of Tunes:

Mazda Miata Roadster RS (NC) '07
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very intruiging tuning method, i will have to give this a try
 
Hey, great tune. I ran about 7 or 8 laps around Cape Ring Inside to test against your time for comparison sake and I ran a 55.587. I thought the car handled great in it's current form. I could probably trim a bit more time off if I'd clean up my lines but thats error on my part. Look forward to more tunes from you. Thanks.
 
Been running online in a 480PP NA(First generation) Miata and destroying a lot of super cars on some of the less power dependent tracks like Willow Springs... Oh and it's pink.

It's a bit squirly, but I like the throttle lift oversteer. Tune is nothing special, so I'm excited to see what some of you guys can come up with.
 
gt4god
Hey, great tune. I ran about 7 or 8 laps around Cape Ring Inside to test against your time for comparison sake and I ran a 55.587. I thought the car handled great in it's current form. I could probably trim a bit more time off if I'd clean up my lines but thats error on my part. Look forward to more tunes from you. Thanks.
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Thanks for the feedback. Glad I was able to help. I hope to be doing a lot of Miata rooms online soon, especially during Christmas. What will be amazing is if folks know about these tunes and come race, the racing should be extremely tight. And those are always the best races, imho.

Deftquiver
Been running online in a 480PP NA(First generation) Miata and destroying a lot of super cars on some of the less power dependent tracks like Willow Springs... Oh and it's pink.

It's a bit squirly, but I like the throttle lift oversteer. Tune is nothing special, so I'm excited to see what some of you guys can come up with.
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Awesome. I assume you're using the Turbo right? I'm working on an NA tune right now using the supercharger and it has a lower PP. I'm about halfway done with it. I'm putting more time into the NA tune because I suspect that there will be a lot of events and series coming up featuring the hidden livery cars. So I'm really taking my time with this one. Had to quit last night because I was getting tuning fatigue, lol. Once my lap times start getting slower no matter what I do (even putting the tune back to it's fastest setting), then it's clear that the car is getting slower due to driver fatigue and not tuning adjustments. That's when it's time to park the car in the virtual garage and go to bed. Will work on it some more tonight.
 
Awesome. I assume you're using the Turbo right? I'm working on an NA tune right now using the supercharger and it has a lower PP. I'm about halfway done with it. I'm putting more time into the NA tune because I suspect that there will be a lot of events and series coming up featuring the hidden livery cars. So I'm really taking my time with this one. Had to quit last night because I was getting tuning fatigue, lol. Once my lap times start getting slower no matter what I do (even putting the tune back to it's fastest setting), then it's clear that the car is getting slower due to driver fatigue and not tuning adjustments. That's when it's time to park the car in the virtual garage and go to bed. Will work on it some more tonight.[/quote]

I went with a supercharger as well. I like the more predictable powerband. I'm excited to see what a tune that's actually had some time put into it can do.
 
Can I get your input on a tune? I based it off of real life spring rates (FM Vmaxx Track) and FM's recommended alignment settings. I think it understeers a tad, but maybe the shock settings need to be adjusted. I couldn't find real life settings for those, so I just set them all the same. This is for the NA Miata, bolt on modifications with no engine tunes or forced induction.

Ride Height: 92/95
Spring Rate: 9.00 / 6.00
Compression: 4/4
Extension: 4/4
Sway Bars: 4/3
Camber: 1.0 / 1.5
Toe: .15/.15

Adjustable LSD: Stock settings
 

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