Car Setup Guide

[Mr Fox]

Well this is the setup guide (http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbarnett/SetupMatrix.html) i swear by, i have used it and it hasnt let me down yet. There is a printed version (http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbarnett/SetupMatrix.pdf) aswell which is what i use. I then drive and if the car needs adjusting i just open my bible and make the adjustments.

[Crash]

setup tips:

NOTE 1: my tips are based on many, many hours of trying to setup cars to handle the whay I want and what I percieve happens when I change the settings. I may not completely understand why things are happneing and I may even have the wrong percetpion of some settings, but it works for me :)

NOTE 2: my tips are for rfactor. other simulators may be reversed in the way the settings work.. fo example in rfactor a negative setting in the toe-in field means Toe-out.. whereas in another simultor a negative value may mean toe-in. Likewise in rfactor a high damper rebound figure means a stiffer rebound .. whereas in another simulator a low damper rebound figure may mean stiffer rebound. For this reason you need to be careful when reading setup guides found on the net, and check what the figures actually mean.

Camber:
Most cars respond well to increasing the front Camber to around 2.5-3.0 degrees and setting the rear to around 0.5-1.0 less than the front, go too far and both tyre wear and tyre heat can become an issue though.
You can also tweak a cars balance with camber to some degree so if a cars understeering in the middle of a corner (assuming minimal throttle or decel input) then you could increase the front/decrease the rear to try to balance it up.. likewise a car oversteering mid corner you would increase the rear/decrease the front.

Springs:
Softening springs can help you run the wheels on & off the kerbs without spinning which helps get faster laptimes by using all the track, and also helps reduce tyre wear slightly. The downside to softer springs is it will reduce responsivenss. If you go too soft the car will have poor turn-in and make it very hard to hit apex points and generally be hard to control. I also find that a softer car overall has a tendancy to understeer, and a stiffer car overall has a tendancy to oversteer - but not always of course.

Stiffening the springs will help give you better turn-in and generally make the car feel more responsive and easier to hit your turn-in, braking and apex points helping you be more consistent. The downside is it can make the car "nervous" and easy to spin over bump and kerbs as well as increase tyre wear & heat slightly, If you go too stiff the car will become nervous and hard to control.

As a general rule of thumb if your car is understeering (mid-corner) on med-fast corners you want to soften the front and/or stiffen the rear to move grip from the rear of the car to the front, likewise if you find the car oversteering in the same corners you would soften the rear and/or stiffen the front.
Generally the rear springs have a greater overall effect than the front.

Ant-roll bars:
Have a similar effect to springs, but tend to be biased towards the slower corners like tight hairpins and chicanes. Just like springs - stiffening both front and rear will make the car more responsive and assist with turn in, whereas Softening both front and rear will make the car ride bumbs better and be less "nervous"

Use the anti-roll bars to help correct oversteer & understeer in slow corners, so if you find the car losing the rear sideways in the middle of a hairpin turn, try stiffening the front and/or softening the rear. like the springs changing the rear has a greater effect than the front, 1 click change on the rear anti-roll can have quite an effect in slow corners


Caster:
Not all cars allow you to adjust this, but where they do, increasing the caster means as you turn the wheel the inside front wheel is trying to "lift" the car. Increasing caster can help you go through turns faster, but the downside is it can increase wear and heat on the front tyres. Also if you go too far it can make the car go through a sudden transition from understeer to oversteer as you turn on your steering wheel further and generally make the car feel unpredictable and difficult to drive. Try gradually increasing this until the car feels horrible or you find yourself "tank-slapping" then back off the caster a couple of notches from that point. If you never reach the "horrible" point I'd leave it at or near maximum caster depending on any front tyre heat or wear issues.

Front Toe:
This is an interesting one, I often see setups with a -0.10 front... and I wonder if the person who made the setup realises this is toe-out. rfactor says in the setup screen "front toe-in" - so a positive value is toe-in whereas a negative value is toe-out. If you read the the setup guide Glen posted above you will find it says a positive value assists with turn-in... interestingly the guide lists no benefit with a negative value...
For a long, long time I could never pick any difference changing this setting so I just set the front to 0.. my theory was if I couldnt pick a benefit either way, I was better off going for less drag / more straight line speed.
Lately I've been able to pickup on a subtle difference, and depending on the mod and car it can be very subtle. What I find is exactly what the setup guide says, going for +10 or +20 on the front makes the car turn in a little better.. what I also think I can notice is that mid corner to corner exit a +Ve value tends to have a bit less front end grip. Using this I change the toe based on the car & track.. if its short radius corners that I just need to point the car in and are over with quicklly then I will go for a +10 or +20 for the response & turn-in. Whereas if a track with long sweeping corners I will tend to go for a -ve value sacrificing a bit of turn-in for the additional mid corner grip I (believe) it gives me. I still find with some cars & tracks I cant pick much difference, so then I set it at 0 for max straight line speed.

Rear Toe:
+ve values help with corner exit oversteer, in particular high HP beasts like the 76 Corvette. In Season 7 I ran Maximum rear toe at some circuits which was actually +1.00 Likewise in TCL S3, the Nissan which is Prone to severe throttle oversteer I'm running max rear toe of 0.40. What +Ve rear toe sacrifices though is turn-in so if you have a car that is very stable on exits but is lacking turn-in you might run 0 rear toe or even a small amount of -ve. Also a setting of 0 will be maximise speed/minimise drag

[Crash]

setup tips continued:

Diff Settings:

Power: This is another setting that I often wonder is correctly thought about.. if you wanted to make a "drift" car you could go for a solid rear axle, or a very strong LSD so that when you break traction, both wheels lose traction together and the car goes sideways. The power setting (simplified) is how closely the wheels rotate together under acceleration/full throttle.. a higher number mean it's more likely for both wheels to spin at the same time and cause the car to go sideways (oversteer) I've actually heard guys on vent suggest going up in the power setting to correct a car that wants to go sideways under power..... but I beleve it may be the wrong way.
Let me explain - I think you really need to work out what exactly is happening to know which way to go with the power. Is the car a High HP car spinning both wheels together causing the car to snap sideways? if so then you likely need to reduce the diff power setting to try to free up the diff and allow thr wheels to rotate at different speeds.. even going as far as spinning just one wheel - I beleive its actually easier to control a car that is gently oversteering/going sideways as it spins just the one rear wheel, than trying to control a car that wants to snap violently sideways as you hit the throttle because it's losing all rear traction completely.

However (and this is the normal description found) are you trying to correct a situation where the car is gently oversteering and going sideways because one wheel is starting to lose traction/spin and it's relying totally on the other one for sideways grip? if so then you need to go up on the diff power to try and limit the one wheel from spinning by forcing more power to go to the other wheel as well.

It's also worthwhile noting that the pump setting will not overcome the effects of high HP and low grip out of tight 1st gear corners.... you have to use your right foot control for that!
If do you try and tame HP out of 1st gear corners with pump settings, you will likely end up with a car that understeers badly under power in medium and high speed corners because spinning wheels is easy in 1st gear but not in a high speed corner... given there is much more time to be gained by handling medium and high speed corners I suggest adjusting your pump for medium - high speed corners and using your right foot control for slow stuff.

Deciding what to do is a little easier if you are experiencing throttle understeer - for example as you try to accelerate out of a corner the car understeers straight ahead. Whats happening is the diff is not allowing the rear wheels to rotate independantly of each other (diff too tight) causing the car to "push" straight. To correct this you need to reduce the power to allow the wheels to rotate at different speeds more easily.
Note: There are some drivers who like to drift out of the corners, creating a lot of "sideways" movement out of the corner by applying the power hard, effectively using the throttle to steer the car.. to do this they increase the power setting - in effect they want the car to lose traction completely. Unless your comfortable or used to controlling a car drifting sideways with the throttle out of the corners lap after lap though I dont recommend it!

Coast: This is all about what happens when you are off the throttle. Usually this is only in heavy braking, corner entry and sometimes in the middle of the corner if you lift off.. same thing as power a higher number means the wheels will want to be rotate at the same speed.
In theory this could mean losing traction on both wheels at the same time causing the car to go sideways quickly. This is pretty unusual though as the engine braking effect is not strong enough to cause this... unless you are too agressive with your down changes causing lock-ups.
Normally a high coast setting will just make the car want to go straight ahead .. this will give you more stable braking but also make it harder to turn the car into the corner, so it will give you corner entry understeer, it will also induce mid-corner throttle-off understeer.
The reverse is true, a low coast setting will give you a car that is much more willing to turn into the corner, will still allow the car to turn easily as you get off the throttle.. BUT too low a coast and the car may want to swap ends as you turn into the corner, or even under heavy braking.

Pump: This is like the master volume, with Coast & Power individual volume controls.. in other words a change in pump is an overall increase strength IE it increases both power and coast together.

Preload: This is for the change between full throttle(diff power) or fully off(diff coast) for example if you are jabbing the throttle on & off mid corner, the diff is quickly going from power to coast.. adjusting the preload helps control the transition - so a high preload can make the car feel more stable in these situations but it can also make the car feel less responsive.

[Wally]

I would also add rear trackbar: I am pretty certain, based on experimenting, that lowering the rear trackbar makes the car less oversteery under throttle on corner exit. Higher trackbar adds oversteer on corner exit.

[Crash]

setup tips continued:


Dampers:

OK the big scary one, this is probably the least understood part of setting up a car, and I certainly include myself in that statement :tape:

Slow vs Fast dampers:
Simplified - the fast dampers are generally adjusted to cope with bumps in the track, allowing the wheel to remain on the ground, whereas the slow dampers are adjusted to control the speed of weight transfer (or the how fast a corner of the car raises or lowers) ... a lot of mods don't even give you the option to adjust the fast dampers.. which can make it easier by letting you just focus on weight transfer. It's also worth noting that they usually affect each other, in other words if you go to maximum fast bump for example, you cant combine that with minimum slow bumb.

Fast dampers:
I'm not going to worry about this other than to say its my thinking that to properly adjust this setting you need something like motec to determine if wheel is losing traction due to the fast dampers being too soft or too firm

Slow Dampers:
As I alluded to above changing this controls how fast the car transitions.. so lets break it down a bit further...

Slow Bump: Increasing the slow bump means that corner of the car will "dip" slower..

Slow Rebound: Increasing this means that corner of the car will "lift" slower

Huh you say?

Rear to front weight transfer: as an example if you make the slow bump on front a high number, when you hit the brakes hard, the front of the car will dip more "slowly" until it reaches the point where it stops (which the dampers do NOT change), whereas if you make the slow bump on the front wheels a low number it will dip at the front "quicker" to the point where it stops.. so what you say??? well it affects how the car feels.. when the car is down at the front and up at the rear like under heavy braking - more weight is on the front, giving the front tyres slightly more effective grip and the rear tyres slightly less. Moving this weight from from the rear to the front is a combination of Slow front bump and slow rear rebound.. I find that when I run a high front bump / high rear rebound, this slowing of the weight transfer makes the car more stable under braking and more likely to understeer on corner entry, whereas a low front bump/low rear rebound makes it more likely to want to swap ends under braking and oversteer on corner entry... this is not exaclty what the setupguide posted by glen above says and about the only thing I disagree with it on. :tape:

Front to rear weight transfer:
The reverse action of course is true as well, so a high rear bump / high front rebound slows down the transfer of weight from front to rear under acceleration.. again I find that a high front rebound/high rear bump tends to make the car understeer under acceleration (ignoring Power drifting out of 1st gear corners that is, only your right foot can properly control that!) wheras a low front rebound / low rear bump tends to make the car more likely to oversteer under acceleration.. to be honest though just like all of the settings you should never just change this blindly and accept that its doing what you want.. becuase of the interaction with springs, dampers, diff settings and so on, you need to do some laps with it set high and do some laps with it set low to confirm its going the way you expect!

Side to side weight transfer: the slow dampers also changes how fast the weight transfers from side to side - so a high bump & rebound all around will make the car feel more "solid" by slowing down this transfer, but may make it feel more skatey, likewise a low bump/rebound setting can make the car feel like it "wallows" on change of direction but also allow the weight to quickly go to the outside wheels giving you the grip on the outside wheels faster resulting in less of a "skatey" feel.

Setting the front with high bump/rebound and rear with low bump/rebound can give you an understeer effect whereas low fron bump/rebound with high rear bump/rebound can give you an oversteer effect.. again I stress you cant just change this and expect it to work becuase of the other factors involved - do laps with it set both ways to be sure its doing what you expect!

So lets say you have a car thats unstable and wants to go sideways or swap ends under heavy braking... you have different options to try and settle it down

1) move the brake bias to the front
2) increase coast setting
3) increase the rear rebound and/or increase the front bump dampers

or some combination of the above.

Which one you should do depends on what other affect you are looking for, or willing to compromise on!

option 1) means you might increase your braking distance since your reducing the rear tyres ability to slow you down
option 2) means you might struggle to get the car to turn into the corner
option 3) means you might increase understeer or oversteer in the middle of the corner or might make the car feel more "skatey" depending on whether you went up on the rear rebound or up on the front bump. You also might introduce some other unwanted characteristic depending on the way the dampers are working with the spwings & roll bars

[Crash]

I would also add rear trackbar: I am pretty certain, based on experimenting, that lowering the rear trackbar makes the car less oversteery under throttle on corner exit. Higher trackbar adds oversteer on corner exit.

Yep thats exactly what I found as well :)

[Mr Fox]

Top write up mate :thumb: