Tuning / set-up guide by ThaJay

Create balanced and nice feeling setups for tandem and solo drifting. This is what works for me.

This guide

I will use my E36 tune as an example for the values. This picture is from before the wide body but I do have a wide body kit on my tune. It makes a difference in the wheel offset and spring size settings. The things I do are applicable on any car. You can use my pointers as a baseline and tune the way you like from there.

Tuning in this game is not real world tuning, but it's comparable in some ways. Don't try and use values that work in the real world but use the physics of the game as a starting point and just try out a bunch of settings. I will explain all the tuning sections below as in the way I use them on my cars. Some values are the same for all cars I tune, other values depend on properties of the car like its weight, grip or power.

Wheels

Rim Diameter
Usually I put something realistic depending on the car, like 18 or 17 inch. If you have trouble spinning the wheels you can try lowering rear rim diameter.

On my E36 I use 17 front and 18 rear.

Tyre Width
Maximum front and rear

Tyre Pressure
200-250.
220 is the normal setting. Don't deviate too much but you can use this to fine tune understeer and oversteer. Softer is a bit more grip, harder is a bit less.

On my E36 I use 200 front and rear

Adhesion
If you are not into tandem yet, keep this at 0%.
If you are into tandem, try and find out how fast the car is compared to others. If you are too slow but your lines are the same, increase adhesion by 2-4% at a time until the speed matches the other car. If you are faster than the others, lower it.

115% is a lot already and I never use that much on a drift car. Save high adhesion for time attack where it belongs.

You can also use adhesion to tune understeer and oversteer a lot, this can make a huge difference. Make sure your setup is balanced before you change this. Ususally I keep front and rear the same but not on all cars.

On my E36 I use 106% front and rear.

Offset
After tuning suspension, go back here and make the wheels fit nicely in the wheel arches. it makes a small difference to performance but I don't think it's worth compromising the look of the car. Drifting is about style as well as skill.

On my E36 I use -6 front and 0 rear (wide body kit)

Suspension

Springs
To tune springs I have a method to find out what the front / rear balance is:
- First lower the car a lot, it's different per car. For the E36 use the lowest at 5cm.
- Then lower spring stiffness to the lowest value.
- slowly move spring stiffness up and look at the dynamic camber value on the top right of the screen. find out where the camber starts moving and put stiffness at that point.
- now increase the spring size to a level where it won't bottom out and also looks good. In a lot of cases it's double the value you used to find the spring stiffness.

If you find a spring stiffness that's in the top half of the adjustment bar (or camber doesn't move at all), increase spring size a few cm and measure again. At the correct height for measuring the camber should start changing in the bottom half of spring stiffness.

Now you have a decent balanced spring setup. I usually don't touch springs after this. You can use springs to tune understeer and oversteer, partly on weight transfer. For instance a bit more understeer is created when you add a bit of stiffness to the front springs. Use small-ish changes like 5-10% more or less.

On my E36 I use 10 cm spring size front and rear.
70kN/m stiffnes on the front and 60 kN/m on the back.

Shock Absorber
Half the spring stiffness in kN/m.

On my E36 I use 35% front and 30% rear.

Toe
Rear below 0,1 on the top right value
Front between 0 and -0,4 top right.

On my E36 I use -0,1 front and 0,1 rear. The values top right read -0,12 front and 0,13 rear.

Camber
Front camber more than rear. Somethign realistic that fits the car. Does not matter as much as in real life.

On my E36 I use -4,6 front and -1,9 rear. The values in the top right read -3,7 front and -1,11 rear.

Caster
10 degrees

Ackerman
100%

Angle of Wheel Eversion
Whatever the maximum is

Stabilizer
Most often I run a 0 kN/m rear anti roll bar and a 100kN/m front one.

Brakes

Braking Torque
maximum

Front Axle Distribution
80%

Transmission

Diff lock
maximum

Gear ratio
Depends on car and power. Make sure 3rd gear is good for most corners and it still spins the rear wheels in 4th gear for the long corners. Maybe fine tune this after changing RPM and adhesion. Just try it out. Keep it stock at first.

On my E36 I use 3,40

Engine

Tune Up
maximum

Max Torque and Rev Limiter
Set max torque at maximum. Move rev limiter so it's just a few pixels above max power. If power does not go down at max RPM, lower max tourque RPM until max power is just before the rev limit.

Turbine
Yes (if possible)

Turbine Pressure
maximum

With this setup the E36 has 625hp just below 8533 RPM and 618N/m at 5145 RPM.