FREE TUNES

NOTE: Please only post in this thread if you have free TCM tunes to share or if you want to comment on the free tunes mentioned in this thread

Please reply to this thread if any of the tunes have improved your lap times or even tell us if you hate the tune and why!

I am giving away my tunes for every TORA and non-TORA event for 2 reasons.
1: I realise that a lot of people don't know how to tune or don't want to/can't tune due to the time involved so this is for you guys. It's not fun driving a car that handles crap - so I hope these tunes help.
2: I only want to win a race if I am genuinely faster than someone - not just because I have a tune that nobody else has. I can't sleep at night if I win purely because I have a tune that nobody else has!

To all Tuners - imagine if you did a tune for a race and give it to everybody. You would save all those people from having to waste 1-2 days of their life trying to tune their cars for the track and if one of those guys returned the favour then it would save you time as well. I hope this thread encourages everyone to share their tunes but I won't hold my breath… P.S - I hate tuning but it's a necessary evil if there are no free tunes available! I especially hate having to spend more time tuning a car (1-2 days) than the time I spend actually doing the race (10 minutes). This wouldn't be so bad if these cars were competitive in Matchmaking lobbies (then the tune wasn't just for a one off event) or if we would ever do the same tracks again on TORA but I don't think we will.

Aids: Automatic Transmission and TCS.

You can see the certified replay for the tune on the R2 Class Maple Valley scoreboard. You may not like the gears as I use Automatic Transmission and I use the buttons to accelerate and brake instead of the triggers but it works for me so there's no reason why it wouldn't work if you use the triggers and/or Manual Transmission.

Front Rim Size: Stock, Rear Rim Size: Last, Rim Style: Borbet CB. Using upgraded Front Rim Size seems to make the car handle slightly worse so that's why I use Stock.
Weight: 2,230 lbs

Tires: 30, 29. Don't use any other tire pressure or you'll simply have less grip which will be quite noticeable.
Gears: Final Drive: 3.16, 1st: 3.98, 2nd: 2.10, 3rd: 1.53, 4th: 1.17, 5th: 0.93. Turn off the 6th gear by moving it all the way to the left
Alignment: -0.8, -0.7, 0.0, -0.1, 4.8
Rollbars: 10, 40. This gives the best turn in speed while still being stable
Springs: 866.6, 866.6, Defaults: 3.1, 3.1. I had the springs on this purely to prevent Spring damage at New York in Simulation mode - however I found that these give the best weight transfer so I'll probably use them for all tracks whenever possible.
Damping: Defaults: 9.2, 9.2, 4.6, 4.6. The defaults work perfectly.
Aero: Full, None. If you can't control the car then you can increase the rear Aero up to a maximum of 650 which is what I usually use for most tracks (speed with the same amount of grip as if you had full Aero) but you may need to add more acceleration onto the 5th gear to compensate.
Braking: 47, 63. You may want to increase the brake pressure. The default of 100 is fine or use whatever you want.
Differential: 38, 12. This prevents lock up when you brake and it prevents lock up when you accelerate out of corners.

I will most likely be using this tune for all the other tracks although I may change the Rear Aero and 5th gear. Normally for most tracks I would use 650 Rear Aero. For Sebring I would use these gears: 4th: 1.28, 5th: 1.08. For Road Atlanta I would use these gears: 4th: 1.20, 5th: 1.02

interesting that u use auto gears mate, as the only fellow button user i changed to a manual just before forza 3 came out. Im defo quicker than i used to be i was only a pro 23 on fm2 and thatz me up to champion 25 on fm3 plus im on less than i was on fm2.

This is a top idea tho mate. If only more people would share their tunes like this. Sadly i dont think many, if any will.

Crisis Nine wrote:This is a top idea tho mate. If only more people would share their tunes like this. Sadly i dont think many, if any will.

I share my tunes with people. All they have to do is ask. Chaddy was using my tune last night in the TCM and he did very well with it.

I offered my tune to Vibe Entertainments as well for the LMS but they would rather learn themselves. So it varies as to whether people want the tunes or not.

Not for free you didn't.

I do it for free.
I gift my tunes to people if they need it.

Only after asking for 60,000 credits per race and being told where to go did you offer them up for free mate by which time who could blame the Vibe boys for feeling a little insulted. This guy is actually going to the max by not only advertising that he has tunes available, which you haven't, but by actually putting it here for all to see if they want to use it instead of waiting for people to come to him. Thats what i meant.

Cheers for posting that up mate. Its quite encouraging now I know my tune is pretty close to yours. The only noticable difference is you run a very soft front roll bar where as I went down the no rear aero/chunk of front end route to get more turn in.

ColinMcRae555 wrote:interesting that u use auto gears mate, as the only fellow button user i changed to a manual just before forza 3 came out. Im defo quicker than i used to be i was only a pro 23 on fm2 and thatz me up to champion 25 on fm3 plus im on less than i was on fm2.

Do you use the Triggers for changing gears or do you use the buttons? Is it possible to change the controller layout in the game options so that you can use the buttons or triggers for changing gears?

its troff wrote:Cheers for posting that up mate. Its quite encouraging now I know my tune is pretty close to yours. The only noticable difference is you run a very soft front roll bar where as I went down the no rear aero/chunk of front end route to get more turn in.

I'm glad you found it useful. I have no idea what you just said! Could you please explain this a bit better: "where as I went down the no rear aero/chunk of front end route to get more turn in", and if possible state the settings you used.

Heh sorry. Basically the cars are pretty similar except when I was running with no aero I was struggling with the front end of the car. I put the front aero up to about 25% to help it turn in but it looks like you achieved the same thing by having a much softer front roll bar than me.

its troff wrote:Heh sorry. Basically the cars are pretty similar except when I was running with no aero I was struggling with the front end of the car. I put the front aero up to about 25% to help it turn in but it looks like you achieved the same thing by having a much softer front roll bar than me.

The tune says I used Full Aero on the front and none on the Rear. So you had No Aero on the Front and Back? So what Aero do you have now. I tried using less than Full Aero on the Front and None on the Rear but it just made the handling suffer and it was slower.

I was running with no aero when I started tuning it. I settled for front end at about 25% and nothing on the rear. I didn't do a proper tune for the track last night as I wasn't racing.

I use the triggers for the gears and A for gas and X for braking.

That's what I thought. For some reason my fingers hurt when I use the triggers and the triggers just feel uncomfortable - I can use them in any other game such as 1st person shooters but not racing games. Also it just doesn't feel natural to me. In a car you would PUSH the pedals with your feet but with the controller you have to PULL the triggers. So I just use the buttons which you push.

Anyway Colin following on from what you said before about how manual gears is quicker than Automatic - in powerful race cars such as R1 or R2 and maybe R3 there are negligible speed benefits when using Manual gears on straights compared to Automatic. The place that Manual makes a difference is in the corners. However I have found a way to minimize the advantage that Manual gear users have over me.

I use a steering technique that allows me to brake later than usual and turn in faster. Its basically what you would do in real life or in the game with a steering wheel. What I do is that when I nearly finish braking for a corner such as a Right hairpin, instead of holding the Left stick all the way to the right or constantly tapping it, I just gradually move the stick to the Right in 1 full motion. By steering in smoothly like you would do with a wheel in real life (instead of holding the steering all the way to the right) you get less resistance (no lock up) to your steering input and you can turn in faster and you'll have more stability.

You can use this steering technique to brake and turn in faster for most corners but you can also use it when not braking. For example after you've braked for the 2nd corner on Road Atlanta Short you can use the steering method to minimize lock up before you go up the hill.

As far as I know it's a lot more difficult to use the steering technique when you use the Triggers to accelerate and brake because you're trying to apply the correct amount of pressure to the brake button while doing the steering technique. Its difficult because your thumb twitches on the Left stick while your finger is on the brake trigger (so you're steering right but also left a tiny bit when your thumb twitches - this isn't the direction you want to go for a Right hairpin!). Or am I wrong - does anybody drive with the triggers and use this steering technique - please reply to this post if you do.

This steering technique alone took 1 second off my Sebring R1 class time in Forza 2 and pretty much all the other tracks. To show you what you can do with this technique - in Forza 2 in R1 class I got to overall position 16 in the R1 scoreboard. This was at the end of the life of Forza 2 when everyone had done their best times. Some positions - Sebring: Top 11, Atlanta: 10, Road America: 10, Nurburg: 15, Atlanta Short: 3, New York: 11, New York Reverse: 4, Sunset Reverse: 5, Sunset Short Reverse: 5, Maple Reverse 11. Everywhere else I had Top 20-50 times but this was only because I used the slower Audi R10 whereas everyone else was in the Ferrari (I hate Ferrari's). I did quite well in R2 class as well: Motegi: 7, Motegi West: 1, Motegi East: 7, Atlanta: 7, Atlanta Short, 4. I've not bothered to do Free Run properly in Forza 3 yet but I did do a number 11 time in R1 class Nurburg with the Porsche #7 within a month of the game coming out and its still there now. Annoyingly it was at number 1 then everyone started to find out that the Toyota was faster!

There are certain tracks where you can use the steering technique on nearly every corner which is probably why I've done such good times there in Forza 2 (these tracks are a good place to start): Motegi tracks, Sebring tracks, Mugello tracks, New York tracks, Nurburg. Unfortunately there are certain tracks where using Automatic is quite detrimental to my times (Manual users can brake later) - Laguna Seca: probably for the corkscrew and last corner and Tsukuba.

Anyway Colin if you put all that stuff together such as if you've got a good knowledge of racing lines and know when to brake and accelerate, etc and the steering technique you can do quite well on the scoreboards. Unfortunately there's a limit to what button users can do - at the end of the day trigger users can use different levels of pressure when accelerating and braking whereas we either have ON or OFF - I know we can add speed onto the 1st and 2nd gears to minimize the effects of this but we will never get the same/better times than people who use the triggers.

i cant do the whole smooth steering thing mate but to makes things seem a bit werider, i have a wheel but no pedals so i use the gear paddles to gas and brake with auto gears . im fast in a kart so if i ever get a play se4at and a better wheel and pedals i should be up with the tuners one day!

I thought you said before that you used Manual?

That's weird. What wheel do you have and why don't you have the pedals?