racing suspension with stock settings == stock suspension? Or not?

[SportWagon]

I tried a seach, because I thought I remembered someone here claiming that stock suspension was better than tuneable suspension. (But, obviously, I didn't find such a thread).

However, in practical terms, in some cases, they may be right in some cases. In GT1 tuneable suspension in most cases seemed to come pre-adjusted to be generally better than stock suspension, to the tune of a couple of seconds a lap. In GT2 this sometimes (perhaps often) doesn't seem to be the case.

A case-in-point was the Renault Clio Sport at Red Rock Valley. Racing suspension with its preset settings caused all sorts of handling problems. Perhaps I could have sorted them out, but it seemed a whole lot easier just to switch back to stock suspension, with which the car behaved so much better.

An experiment I should try sometime is copying the numbers from the settings for the stock (normal) suspension, which are shown in complete detail, into the racing suspension, and see if the car handles just the same. That is, determine whether the racing suspension has other "magic parameters" which prevent this from working (e.g. perhaps assumed anti-roll stiffness which isn't actually "1").

Does anybody else have thoughts on this issue?

 

[Parnelli Bone]

I think it's a good idea to copy the stock settings as you say...it'll make an interesting experiment. I dont' think PD's setting of "1" in suspesions is very accurate, though...i think PD was being a bit lazy and didn't want to include the actual number...otherwise too many cars would wind up acting the same.

A Shelby Series 1, for instance, handles corners extremely flat like a sports car with strong anti-roll bars should. Compare the Shelby to a Subaru Forester, and you'll see alot more body-roll. No way they have the same stabilizer settings in my opinion...

Racing suspesions (when untuned in the game) always have the bound & rebounds set on 7 with hardly any camber (or even NO camber) on the wheels. This may work at some tracks/ scenarios, but i always wind up tuning. Also, depending on the car, some suspensions are set way too stiff so far as the springs go.

...long story short: i always tune. In most cases i'm softening the dampers unless i need them to be hard. This influences the way cars dive and squat in braking & out of corners so it's important to get these right. I always have more camber than the original settings: muscle cars i'll have up to 5 or 6 degrees up front with much less (1 to 1.5) in the rear. Most other cars won't be so extreme....a BMW 3 series i'll have 4-ish front camber with 1.5 to 2-ish rear camber. Kei cars i'll use 3-ish front camber perhaps.

Lots of people don't add camber but i find it makes the steering a bit too nervous if you don't add it up front at least. But that's the way i drive. I'd rather sacrifice a bit of braking & steering reaction for mid-to-late corner grip 👍

For rallies, i've wound up adding plenty of rear camber to some cars to get them to slide (the datsun 240 Z comes to mind) a bit. depending on the car, i'll experiment with front & rear toe, too. I rarely use toe in road-racing, though.

..finally, i try not to use racing suspensions unless the race seems to call for it. I much prefer the quicker-tuning sport or semi-racing setups, and i've done plenty of low-speed racing with just a stock suspesion and/or tires as well.

 

[sucahyo]

I did this kind of comparison and feel no difference. I try setting racing suspension to stock value and setting stock suspension to racing suspension default value. Both feel the same. I even count the number of bounce of both suspension (using ultra soft damper) and find no difference.

1 at stock suspension equal to 1 at racing suspension.

 

[Parnelli Bone]

I did this kind of comparison and feel no difference. I try setting racing suspension to stock value and setting stock suspension to racing suspension default value. Both feel the same. I even count the number of bounce of both suspension (using ultra soft damper) and find no difference.

1 at stock suspension equal to 1 at racing suspension.

well there we have it...