Why not max out "travel range"?

With regard to setting a car up, in most cases you want it as low as possible, however this is limited by the car bottoming out or hitting the suspension stops.

As far as I can tell, the travel range option effectively extends the suspension travel, so my question is: Why wouldn't you always dial in the maximum amount of travel range which will allow you to lower the car as much as possible and/or soften the suspension as desired?

 

Although I don't know enough about racecar setup to tell you, there are some advantages to running on packers in some setups, from what I've heard.

 

There's setting a car up for reality, and there's setting a car up for AC. What works in reality may or may not work for AC, and vice versa. All you can do is try a change, and see how it affects lap times in AC.

 

uhm mate .... at begin need to be say , i play only assetto , i dont play any other sim , but there is not one big black hole in this game (maybe negative) , but using forum to ask "Why" and "?" ... for that there shoud be "Manual" with eplanations of lot of things like Fallout 4 have 400 pages manual but ..... reality give kunos real critical strike after console relase ... im hoping for kunos they making progress ... casue this ver. of game is not ready to realase to console

 

Fallout has a big manual because they created things just for the game. But car setup is done using real life knowledge, even if the setup work sometimes has to be adjusted to each sim.

But already exists game manual: http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/assetto-corsa-faq-game-description.91105/
And here a setup manual: http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/assetto-corsa-car-setup-guides.99049/

 

yea thx mate

 

There are cases in which you don't want the car to lean to much to the side or dive/squat. For example a single heavy braking zone, a very high load corner combined with bumps and fast fast change of direction ( hello eau rouge) a huge dip like in brands hatch and so on.

I assume you're talking a out gt2/3 cars here. Not many cars have the option to adjust bump stop rate but those who have it are most certainly downforce cars. The vertical load of the wings combined with a corner may destabilise the car due to suspension being too soft. So you want soft suspension, very nice and complying, but there's that nemesis on the track that just needs special attention. That's when packers/bump stops come in play and they worm perfectly well in AC for those with the complaining attitude before me.

 

A case is F1 cars, where pitch compromises global aero balance. Other less extreme cases could be in GT cars to travel as low as possible without diffuser stall, or ground effect loss.

 

Need to test and see is it working in AC as irl ...

3:47 talk about bump stops ...

 

Set it in a way that you hit bumpstops only in straights, but not in corners.

 

Hi!

Where in telemetry can I see if and where on the track did suspension hit the bumpstops?

Thanks.

 

Well, F1 and LMPs will just run really stiff springs. Generally you want to stay off of the bump stops as much as possible in a race, they usually won't last a full race distance IRL if relied on to change the handling of the car (any reasonable race distance anyway - 45 minute sprints excluded).

 

You need to enable dev apps in ac folder cfg file and then open the Telemetry app. Note it's real time telemetry and cannot record u less you're using motec. There's a red and a yellow line. Red is current suspension travel, yellow is when the suspension hits the bump stop.

 

So if there are no bump rubbers you are best to run maximum travel range? - or do all cars have bump rubbers/stops?

 

When there are no rubbers, there is not travel range setting to begin with ,when you change travel range, you actually change number of packers (or in simple words, the bumpstop length), more travel range ==> shorter bumpstop.

Watch this video, he explains this around 5:00 - 6:00

 

All cars have bump stops/packers to prevent damage of the dampers/springs/suspension arms/body. They come in many shapes and sizes, some of which look like this:
They're there to absorb that last bit of energy left over after all the available suspension travel has been exhausted, or in other words, there is some energy left over to be absorbed. If there isn't anything to absorb it, the car would jump violently and, most probably, there will be damage sustained.
Now, for race cars, think of it as a second or 'back up' spring which is a lot stiffer than the normal spring-damper combination and that's where its advantages are. Don't just imagine some weird 'new stuff'. It's just a second spring, which ONLY comes into play in places where the normal spring/damper is too soft to absorb. I gave some extreme examples before, like Eau Rouge or Brands Hatch turn 1. Generally corners where downforce is combined with very high lateral force from cornering, rendering the pair of the springs/damper on one side fully compressed. It's a back up plan and as such, don't be afraid to change settings. It's there to be used but most of all use your brain. Analyse. Feel what the car is doing. Is it leaning too hard? Are roll bars enough to hold it or you need to adjust the packers? Stuff like that.

Happy driving.

 

Good video. He says it allows you to run softer springs and lower ride heights without bottoming out.

 

Yes, soft spring and the back up springs kick in once the aero gets high on the car. That for very high downforce cars though. The effect is not THAT prominent in GT cars.

 

Here's some telemetry of a GT3 car at Brands Hatch GP. The higher a plot goes, the more the suspension is compressed. The red plot is full soft springs, default travel range. The green plot is minimum travel range (30 as opposed to 75). You can see that the green plot doesn't go as high as the red plot in compressions; that's where the bump stop is being hit.

What that tells you, I don't know - just that the suspension isn't travelling as far. I suppose the bump stops would stop the car from bottoming out when the springs are fully compressed.

 

In the scg003 at Nords I found I had to lower travel range to avoid bottoming out at the end of dottinger hohe. Thats about the only place this car will get to its top speed of 296kmh with lots of aero pushing it into the ground. Otherwise youd need to run a bit higher or stiffer springs then youd actually want for the rest of the track.

All the corners around the rest of the track even the quicker ones are about 50kmh slower which means aero compression isnt as severe so you can get away with softer springs and a relatively low ride height just liniting travel for when it hits max aero load.

If you have a high speed high load corners with bumps its a little different as you would beed to adjust the car to not run out of suspension travel or bottom out there. Its more for use on tracks where your top speed is the end of a striaght but no corners are getting the same high aero loads.

The high aero load experianced at its max speed will be quite different to the loads it experiances in cornering if there are no very high speed corners especially a track running fairly high downforce.