How do you set ride height ?

I saw in other sims some apps to log the suspension movement, so you could see if you have some spare height to the car, or if you are bottoming out sometimes. How do I know how much I can lower the car without this ?
Impossible to judge accurately by feel to me at least :S

 

I know next to nothing about ride heights and how best to set them up, but for me I just drive flat out and if I'm still loosing traction over bumps/kerbs I increase the ride height bit by bit until it's OK.

 

It doesn't work like that, unless you lowered the car\soften the suspension, the suspension will never bottom out with the default setup, and when you increase the height you only make the car more prone to losing traction from bumps and weight transfers.
Maybe you got the wrong impression from reading about coil-overs, where lowering the car stiffen the suspension...

 

^^ ^^
If you're skipping over bumps and losing traction, increasing ride height won't solve that.
Only softening the suspension etc. will help.

Maybe bottoming out and skipping due to, too hard suspension is getting mixed up.
It could just be your way of describing it, but you mean the same thing.

But back to the OP.
Have you tried Telemetry dump in AC.??
Not sure it will work for all cars: AIM Race Studio.

 

(Ignoring all other suspension settings)
To answer your question you would lower both front and rear about 2 clicks at a time until you get scraping. When you get scraping raise it back up 1 click until you don't get scraping anymore. Assuming the default has an optimal front:rear height ratio you should be fine.

Now lets get kinda technical, still without data collection.
If you are adjusting the height on a GT2 car then it is likely that the optimum difference between the front ride height and the rear ride height is about 15mm (1.5 centimeters) while moving. The front height should be 1.5 centimeters lower than the rear height. This means that if you have lots of rear downforce then when the car is stationary you may have to adjust to ride height to a difference of 20mm, for example. As the car is moving through the air the various parts of the car create downforce which physically forces the car down and lowers the ride height. Hopefully it lowers the ride height to that 15mm sweet spot.

Raising the rear height of the car also increases the amount of downforce on the car (given that you kept the front at the same height). Think of it like when you put your hand out of a moving car. With your fingers pointed forward if you raise your palm then your whole hand is forced downwards. Similar principle.

I just learned this stuff less than a week ago. It is really amazing when you think about it. Imagine this. You can have the car in the height "sweet spot" in the turns where you want the most stability and downforce. As you accelerate the front lifts and puts weight on the rear tires for traction and makes the car as a whole lighter. Upon braking the front end dips so low that the air behind the bottom of the car is disturbed creating drag and slowing you down even more. Amazing.

~Bailey

 

It's called weight shift... ^^ ^^
and braking slightly before a turn shifts the weight to front giving more grip/ better cornering.
Some folk trail brake.

Simply put, ride height, ARB and suspension, is all about not bottoming out the car while retaining the grip on the bumpy parts of the track.
But also about not letting the car roll too much that it becomes lazy on turns and twists/chicanes.
Tyre pressure is also a whole different matter and can affect things greatly.

If you've got SimBin's GTR check the manual or search for GTR handbook.

 

Agree agree...
The aim shows only the suspension's movement and its 0 point is not the ground while rF and simbin games simply log ride height. Furthermore the suspension movement in aim is just opposed to ride height lol. When a spring is compressed the wheel travels up and it's when ride height gets lower.

 

Surely they'll be a way to get more accurate telemetry data from AC's car chassis ride height in relation to ground.

 

Yea, weight shift does play a part in it (a gigantic part really), but weight shift cannot make you car "lighter" as a whole, increasing your weight to power ratio.
'Rake' is the magic word in this case. AMAZING!!! Just so excited about it!
~Bailey

 

Hmmm... you never talked about making the car lighter.
Down force has not got anything todo with power2weight ratio.

Of'cos everyone's excited... we waited for this since GPL was getting raced in 640x480.
Obviously the res patch and fpsV2 came but...

Been so long we waited for this, all race simmers alike.

 

Now I am confused. If power stayed the same and the weight is reduced wouldnt that change the power 2 weight ratio?
~Bailey

 

Of'cos, but you're trying to mix to different sets of physics here.

Static weight...

Flight dynamics and turbines is really interesting, but it's a deep, deep subject and too clever for me i'm afraid.

 

The power to weight is usually used using the weight of the complete car. And that does not change ofcourse. But your understanding of the vehicle dynamics is correct. Did you find that on the net or in a book ?

 

Great thread! Learning is the best

 

If you want to dive deeper in this subject, you could read the book "Racing car vehicle dynamics"
by Milliken & Milliken. It will give you more speed than a practicing a weekend uninterrupted...

When you look at the telemetry in AIM, keep in mind that it doesn't report ride height but rather the CG height (center of gravity) if I understood it correctly.

 

Im wondering, do we see the effects of changing camber/toe or raising/lowering suspension on the actual car? As in seeing the wheels leaning/pointing in/out or the car being lower/higher from the ground.

Remember LFS you saw every little change on the car and it certainly helps learning/understanding than if you cant see any difference. Also, it would be great if in the full version we could see that image of the car in the setup menu to animate the wheels etc when changing toe/camber to see them lean in/out etc when changing.

Im gonna go test right nowmake an outrageous setting and see if there is a change.

 

You mean in the telemetry ? In high-tec series, camber, tyre pressure and virtually everything else are directly
measured continuously. In less high-tec series, those will be visible indirectly for instance through the tyre
temperature. Making the suspension harder or softer in combination with your aero setup will be visible in
the suspension travel and ride height. There are a couple of other diagrams showing the demper effectivity.
All your settings will all be visible in the traction circle. A better setup will mean more grip and a bigger traction circle.

But you are (or at least I am) not capable of driving the track exactly the same twice, especially not with
different setups. The telemetry is for that reason quite noisy and unsure. It requires advanced mathematics
to analyse your setup only from telemetry.

In my opinion, try and determine the wing settings just on feeling, use telemetry to setup right hide and
suspension. AC will help you to setup the toe-in. Practice to observe and remeber over/understeer at corner
entrance, apex and exit. That will give hints about the proper setup for dempers and ARB. But this is just
based on my experience and I'm curious how other people handle this. And remember, everything influences everything else...

 

At the end of the day using just telemetry will not give you the "optimum" setup. Instead multiple laps with informed changes based on feeling and data will give you the best results for you.

 

Don't confuse weight with mass.

 

Nah it depends. You will never be able to get the right height by trying... it would take you a few mins each time to get to the worst bump you know in the game in high speed, and then you still won't have a clue if you are bottoming out or if you have 10cm too much ... I will try the telemetry app suggested here
BTW talking about trail braking... I don't know if it's the same term, but I just discovered yesterday that the only way I could get less than 1:58 with xbow@imola is relasing the brake at the perfect timing so I get some light oversteer into the corner. Manipulating the setup like crazy for less understeer and more oversteer still gave me tendency to understeer under the slightest push of the gas, and then if I got oversteer it would be a serious grip loss instead of the 10-20% slip that increases grip ...

Where do I get the AIM race studio telemetry plugin for AC ?? google gives nothing