Car set-up wisdoms

@Hany

I think that all the fast guys use the 1st method to make a quick setup. It's the smartest way when you're late for a race and didn't practice, for example. Or just for casual driving.

The 2nd, harder method, I took from real race engineers and part manufacturers.

 

Well, let me make some points from the point of view of someone who doesn't know how to do a setup.

Lots of people saying "adjust the gears....adjust the dampers...adjust this....use these apps" - but the biggest question anyone would have is "adjust them to what? and why?" And how would I know if the adjustment is good or not? Or what difference it made to the handling, if any?

Look at the app and you see numbers. Ok, but again, what number do I want to see?

Aside from Aris's cookie cutter setup advice (which I'm not convinced by as I've said in other threads), it's all pretty theoretical at the moment.
There's no actual pragmatic or practical or real-in-this-game advice.

Imagine if you'd never done a setup. Would you put tyres at 10 or 20, 50? How would you know?

I'm not saying the advice is wrong or bad. If you say, for example, "begin by adjusting the dampers" - unless someone knows what to adjust them to, for a specific concrete example, they are still lost just looking at a bunch of sliders.

Even if you say "this slider lowers this" its' still "so what?" Do I want it low or not?
Even if you say "Lowering it makes the car do x, raising it makes it do y" so what? Do I want the car to do x or y?

Neo and Arch clearly have different methods, but even after reading all their posts I still wouldn't know where to begin to setup a car.

Sure, I get that I adjust the sliders in some way. I might even read your posts and decide a specfic order to adjust the sliders in....but I
really have no idea what to adjust them to, nor why. Of course I get that "it depends on the car" and I get that "it depends on the track" I don't
really accept "driving style" but it's not worth arguing - "it depends on the driver" etc etc.

But again, in what way? If the track is Donington then what? Or if it's Silverstone International then what?

If someone has the time and the skill - actually videoing themselves creating a setup from scratch for a particular car and track, using the mentioned dev apps - in whatever way they are useful - and saying, as they work, what they are looking for, what they are changing, and why and showing what effect the changes are having - whether that's by pointing to the dev app and showing the change, or driving the car and, in a particular corner, showing how the car is quicker or more balanced etc. That would be incredibly useful. Someone could learn from that.

Think of the difference between :-

- Seeing someone's finished painting. This is like getting someone else's setup - you can't really learn much about how they created it by looking at it. Not very useful for learning from.
- Having someone talk about how they paint a picture. Which is like this thread.
- Watching someone paint - like the youtube timelapse videos or WIP threads. These are really educational to someone who wants to learn - because you see their process in action.

 

you can start with general guide like this http://iracing.wikidot.com/components or http://www.rapid-racer.com/suspension-tuning.php or http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/assetto-corsa-car-setup-guides.99049/ to understand the basic .. than you can go here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvsoIicyFIuPp1XlysgXO2km6yivq4wG8 if you wanna make it easier and use Motec or just google/YT it, plenty of guides out there

 

The only way to learn is to apply it in practice. Just the theory doens´t mean much, specially when you dont know what the theory is talking about.

The first time i learned how arb´s work was in gpl, and since then everytime i had a car that has the same problem i had back then, i apply the same solution, thats how you learn. And for every setting that i use in my "setup toolbox" there was one "first time" when i figured out how one setting can have this or that effect on the car.

One approach that would work was to post a "before setup" to a problem like, "i can´t use the kerbs on this chicane", a replay or video showing the problem, then an "after setup" with the solution, and a replay or video of the car after the change. Then you would replicate this to finally understand what that change did. From then on, everytime you had the same problem, regardless of sim or car, you could apply this solution to see if it works.

 

Car Setup:
I went to find my old bookmarks for setup guides and sites I had saved over the years to use as reference if I forget (and I do) what would fix problem A, B, and C without compromising D.

Here is couple links that I had saved, that still worked, and they are really good stuff. The first one is not about setups, it is about driving techniques, because I think that first you should learn what to expect from driving a car fast, and then work on how to make the car work for you. If you adjust setup, while driving "wrong", you are only making it harder for yourself to reach the full potential.

Driving Techniques:
http://www.drivingfast.net/car-control/smooth-driving.htm#a

In Practice on Nordschleife:


Setup Basics (with nice visual aids and explanations):
http://safeisfast.com/sections/8-ra...eos/78-learning-car-setup-on-sim#.Vcum5dEViUk

Enjoy.

 

Did some aero testing with the Lotus at the 1000m drag strip. I have aero and suspension app that i based these control samples on. I speed up to 280 km/h and hold right before I hit the wall at the end of the drag track, I snap a picture of the screen.

In this sample, 42/85 got closest to the ground and netted the most down force.


Rake matters!!!

Aggressive angle of attack gains a lot of down force with some sacrifice with the drag.



difuser effect can be observed as the car with the same aoa is raised...... lift is lost.



I mentioned before that I was spinning at the exit with a lot of rake, I don't know if AC pre release was the culprit because that was the time when i tried to find the most downforce for the car. With AC 1.23 I get too much front grip at the turn in.

 

Another rake. This is more thorough 3 samples error factor.



Took a lot of time to get these but I'm kind of glad I did this. I put so much emphasis with rake every time I set up cars

Not even worth the trouble messing up car geometry.

 

Yesterday I had some time to try doing setup wearing a cam. This video could be helpful for beginners but for guys like Hany there's nothing to see.

My schedule was a bit too tight when doing this and I already know that I didn't explained enough why I'm doing changes I did. That's why I hope that people will leave a comment and ask for more info and I'll try to explain as good as possible.

Hopefully that wasn't a complete waste of time. Please have a mercy, I really tried...

 

Thanks for sharing, I can at least get a half decent setup for the Quattro now

very nice setup BTW

The only criticism I have is that with the head mounted cam it is difficult to read the settings screen, maybe just capturing the centre screen would be better, but i dont know if you can do that.

Do you have the monitor bezels overlapping reduce the overall bezel width? (as a fellow 3 screen user I was trying to spot what you have done!)

 

Yeah I know you can't read the screen but I have to do it this way. Can't capture realtime with Shadowplay nor with Fraps. I've tried it previously without a success. Don't wanna add any audio track afterwards. Realtime is the way I wanna do things because of two reasons: time saving and to keep my reactions 'true'.

Bezels are wide but overlapped.

 

I need one of you clever programmer types to develop an app that I can load my replay of 10 laps I have done and then give the best settings for the car on how I drive.
Then I don't have to think about it and just punch in the numbers.

 

some gold advices in this thread, keep the wisdom coming!

 

I will just list the links

LFS guide, it works in AC too http://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Advanced_Setup_Guide#Suspension
The most nerdiest and detailed thing you can find about cars on the internet (I think ) for free: http://users.telenet.be/AudiR8/Carroll Smith - Tune to win OCR.pdf
Oh, I almost forgot this:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAywC4hctMbmu_9J6vSewjmIoaLtj-Bry It isnt really about setup that much, but it is about driving (not all of the videos, but you will see that by the titles )

 

One of the great things about AC's setup menu is when you hover over any particular adjustment slider there is a pop up bubble which explains how the car will react depending on how stiff/soft/whatever you change the value to. I've used this since day one and I still read them every time I need to make setup adjustments to my car.

I tend to favour a stable setup rather than 'quick' because with unstable setups I usually end up off piste. A friend sometimes uses my setups and he thinks they are always very unstable and usually undriveable. As others have said it depends entirely on the individual persons driving technique and how confident you are with that particular car. The more I drive a car the more I'll push it which in turn means more setup adjustments.

 

When I'm doing race car setup, the only things where I'm not going 'comfortable first' are gear ratios and aero setup. With rest of the options I'm trying to make the car as comfortable as possible to push hard on slippery surface.

 

Very helpful, Thanks!
I am trying to learn to setup the cars and I am struggle mostly when to change suspension stiffnes and tuning the dampers.
If you make a video with more complex race car would be realy great. Thank you again

 

I think what's more important for me at this stage is more work on consistency.

I'd be happy enough to ignore setups for now but a problem I often have practicing on medium tires in a race car is the tires don't heat up according to the tire temp app. They might only go green for one corner and spend the rest of the lap cold. Is that OK? Would setups fix that problem? I was trying out the GT cars on Zandvoort and couldn't get much heat into the medium tires in just about any GT car.

 

Sure. Suspension and dampers shows a big part when setupping a race car.

 

This thread shows the biggest problem in setup talk imo...knowledge transfer is very difficult. Explaining how to make a setup from scratch is not what people are looking for and if they are, it's a big mistake.

The gap between the ones in the know and the ones who want to start is HUGE(litterally years) and there is no "quick advice" that can close that gap. If you want to get good at making setups from scratch, start accumulating knowledge now, don't ever stop and accept the fact that you will still suck at it for at least the next couple of years.

Also, please consider that you need to be a good driver before being a good setup maker. If you are 4 seconds off-pace you do not have the driving abilities to make a setup from nothing, you don't have feel for what would be actually making you faster. Download a bunch of setups from reputable sources, pick one that feels allright to you and DRIVE. It is while making small tweaks on those already decent setups that the learning should be done, not by starting from scratch.

 

@PhilS13 nailed it.

Asking us to post more knowledge and expecting to learn from it is like being an artist and expecting to become a pro after one tutorial.

You need to do that 10 pages of sketches per day to really get good, you know.