I am in no way a fast driver nor am I a tuning expert, but I've always preferred to do my own tunings instead of using tunes made by someone else, which gives me a better feel on how the car works. Having a degree in automotive engineering I have an idea how the game is supposed to act in simulating the driving, which goes a long way.
I would recommend reading these two guides to get the basics down,
GT6 Tuning Guide 1.15 and
General Tuning Guide (Updated 1.09). They're made for GT6, but most of the content in those still apply.
I hate the way the cars are set stock in the game, with "understeery" suspension and way too powerful LSD, causing me issues as I drive with a wheel (Logitech G29). I always do my tunes at
Suzuka East Circuit, after getting them "done" I verify that everything is done right on the full circuit. I have landed on Suzuka because it's pretty "neutral" track, with certain key points to highlight possible issues in the tune.
My tunes on my cars are "generally good" setups which work (
for me) on any given track without modifying them. For events on certain tracks I often modify these base tunes to the track, but the original setting will always be the primary one.
These are the basics I go through until I feel the car is set up so it feels like it fits my hands. I often do some minor touch ups on my cars when I use them more, if I feel like the initial setup is not "quite there".
My basic rule of thumb setting things up go in this order:
- Transmission Flip
- Anti-roll bar settings
- Ride height and spring stiffness (or "frequency" in GT Sport)
- Toe-in / -out
- LSD setup
I don't really touch the dampers, as I have no way to test how they act in game and testing them "by hand" doesn't really seem to make any sense, given how far just setting the springs get me.
I always change things around by setting them up one to two clicks at a time, testing for few laps in between. I try to avoid changing several things at once, as it may cause unwanted results which are hard to troubleshoot after.
Transmission flip"Set once and you're done". Basically this means you set up a close ratio gearbox (first and last gear being as close as they can be), with even spacing between gears. After setting this up you just set the final gear to the top speed you wish to reach and you're always set to race on any given track.
Transmission flip instructions in another post in this thread.
Anti-roll bar settingsAlmost every car I have I set this to 8 front, 9 back. This limits the body roll quite a lot, while introducing little oversteer due to the stiffer rear setting.
Ride height and spring stiffnessRoughly I could describe my method as "low and stiff", as I often set the ride height as low as I can go without the car clipping on curbs or other track surface objects. The spring stiffness I set to be as stiff as the suspension needs to be to prevent bottoming out at the height I use.
I prefer to rise the rear end of the car a bit higher than the front, which increases the rotation of the car around its central axis. This is more or less a feel thing, but roughly all my cars are about 10mm higher at the back.
Toe-in / -outToe-in for understeer, toe-out for oversteer. Bigger effect comes from the rear end settings. Depending on the car I always start by setting the rear toe-in down to 0.40 (if it's higher) to take away the understeer the cars have, setting it lower if the car needs it. Front end will have toe-out at 0.10 which I will set higher if the corner entry doesn't feel like it has enough "bite" to it. The
group cars (Gr. 3, 4, B, X) already have some toe-out at front which I don't often touch (around 0.25).
LSD setupI personally prefer to have a relatively "mild" LSD-settings.
I usually set the initial torque to 10, as it seems like a good compromise. Then I set the acceleration setting down to the point where the car does not easily lock up the wheels on throttle opening at leaving the corner, which tends to cause me the most problems (as I drive with a wheel). Deceleration setting is down to the point where going to engine braking does not introduce understeer.
I have my basic starting point to where I often roughly set the car, then it's all about just driving around and taking notes on how the car feels like. I've found that about three laps between setting things up work for me to get the general idea, and after I move to the full circuit I can really nail down what I still need to adjust.
