| CAMBER TUNING FOR FORZA MOTORSPORT |
| Camber tuning in Forza Motorsport 4 has the appearance of being one of the more straight forward tasks, due mainly to the fact that it's one of the elements we can monitor in tuning mode via the telemetry screen. However, upon closer inspection, getting camber dialed in has a lot to do with the interrelation between the ARBs and the spring/shock combo. |
| That said, the challenge in using telemetry to align camber comes from the variance of turns on any particular track. The idea is to use data from tire temperatures (inner, middle, and outer) and set the camber so that the temperatures are relatively even across all three. |
| One major shortcoming that impedes achieving our goal is the fact that Forza Motorsport doesn't provide an optimal temperature range for the variety of tires available when we purchase our upgrades. One school of thought in real world tuning is that the inner portion of the tire is optimal when running at about 10 degrees warmer than the outer portion, but there's no way to confirm if this theory translates in-game. My gut feeling is that we want bright green across all 3 sections of tire, and as close in temperature to each other as possible. |
| The second challenge is that most tracks lack balance in regard to left hand versus right hand turns, as well as the type of turns. So getting all four corners dead even in temperature across all three sections probably isn't happening. A track that is heavily biased with right hand turns is going to heat the left side tires more, but don't worry, there's a trick to it all. |
| For the most part, if you can get your inner, middle, and outer areas of the tires within 10 degrees of each other, you're 90% of the way there. The last 10% you'll need to rely on patience, perseverance, and experimentaion. The trick is that the uneven heating of the tires is a result of body roll, which means just tweaking the camber settings isn't going to work. If you try to just adjust the camber without considering the springs, shocks, and sway bars, you'll be chasing your tail and getting nowhere. |
| As usual, knowing where to start with your initial settings is always the hardest part. Fortunately the in-game tutorial recommends starting with the default setting of -0.5 / -0.5 and why not, you gotta start somewhere.... |
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| Take a look above at the first example. We're just dealing with wheel pairs at this point, as we handle each pair seperately. Let's say we heat up the tires in tuning mode and after running some laps at -0.5 we get this. This is pretty straightforward. It's plain to see that we don't have enough camber. When we turn either left or right the tires are rolling up on the outer edge of both and the insides aren't getting hot. No problem, add a couple of clicks and run some more laps to fix it. Keep working it until the temperatures even out. Oh, if life were always this easy.... |
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Oh nooo's, what do we have here? Okay, it's a pretty cut and dry example, your tires probably aren't going to look exactly like this, but you get the point. Say the track is a right hand turn dominant circuit and telemetry drops this in your lap, what do you do? You can't fix this with a camber adjustment. How can you? If you run more camber, you'll get the left side tire more even, but the inside right tire is just going to get worse. Sorry, you can't run less camber either. When you see this, it's telling you there's too much body roll which is a spring/shock - sway bar issue. And that's how you're going to fix it. I can't tell you exactly how just yet, hey, I may never be able to tell you for sure because it's situational and I didn't write the code for this game. Just as an example, which is probably the best way to explain it, I was playing around with my Exige tune, and had the sway bars set medium soft, something like 15-15 and I was running laps in tuning mode. My tires looked something like the above illustration. Don't forget, sway bars tie the left and right side suspension together via the lower control arms so if we're fixing body roll, the ARBs would be my first choice. I kept cranking up the ARB stiffness, a tweak, some laps, another tweak, more laps, etc....at around 35/35 my world started making sense again and the temperatures came together....somewhat. Somewhat, meaning more tweaking was required. In other examples on other cars, I cranked the sway bar up and kept going....a few clicks at a time, gradually, until I hit 40 and it didn't work. It wasn't the ARB this time; sometimes it's not enough spring, other times it's not enough shock.... The moral of the story that is consistent is that we need MORE. More of something. Body roll means we're too soft and our contact patches are telling us the story of our inadequate set up. This process of getting things just right is going to take time, and it's on a case by case basis. The other thing I noticed is that when I stiffened something in the rear, the front changed also, as it should. You're messing with the distribution of weight....and so the story goes. You understand the principles and trust me if you're patient and persistent you can eventually dial it in. And keep in mind, sometimes when you have more of something in the rear, you might find yourself needing LESS of something in the front as a result. The only way to do this is to tweak, run laps, check telemetry and adjust intelligently off your new readings. Rinse and repeat, there's no other way. You may hit readings where suddenly you're running hot on both outer edges of a wheel pair, good! Add a click of camber and run some more laps. Last time around I built this site prior to the release of Forza 3, so a lot of what I put out there was theoretical based upon real world physics and my Forza 2 experience. I got disgusted by the AWD-RWD fiasco and never updated the info here. No theoretical gibberish this time around. I'm playing the game, and updating as I go, so if I find a super tweak or silver bullet in there somewhere, I'll add to this section. For now, this is what I've got. It's time consuming, but it works. I also think tire pressure adjustments can make a difference evening tire temps as well. Less pressure heats them up faster, so I'm working it. Just don't have anything solid at this point. But getting good results with the ARBS, springs, and shocks. |