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First off, this is my first time posting, I've been playing Forza for a while now but have never been to this site. Feel free to correct me on anything here if I'm wrong.

    I suggest tuning your car into a 4 speed or a 5 speed, why you say? Because everytime you shift up you lose exhaust pressure, leading to loss in power, which leads to loss in speed, and that leads to loss in precious time. So the less gears the better. Now on with the guide! =)

   

    ~Find the most effective RPM range on your car, to do so for production cars go to the engine upgrades in career mode and check out the little chart that sort of looks like this:



I couldn't find any that looked anything like the graphs in the game, but this'll have to do.

In the graph there are 2 green vertical lines,I call this the Optimum Power Range (OPR) in between those lines are the where you're going to get the most performance out of this certain car, I'd say in between those line's is about 80-90% of the cars full power. Try to find the OPR in your cars graph and note it.

    ~Drive around the track you're tuning on and see what your top speed on that track is (record this, we'll be using this data later.)

    ~After you've done the first 2 steps its time to tweak your gears! With the lines on the upper right hand corner try to make a lope, steep at first and then flattening down on the higher gears.From the first step keep the lines from 2nd gear to last gear inside your car's OPR,while keeping that slope.

    ~With all that done now comes the most time consuming part of the tuning process. With the top speed from step 2 try to get that speed near the end of your last gear, so right before you leave the OPR you've hit top speed for the track.


    ~Fine Tuning- Once you've done all the steps, run he lap with your newly tuned car and look for the little things like places where you're about to turn, and right before you turn you leave the OPR and have to shift up, remember that every time you shift up you lose precious time. Another thing to look or is when your coming out of a turn you're not at all close to the OPR, if this happens your engine will have to work harder and will struggle to get you back up to speed, so try and change the tuning on that certain gear.

  
One last tip that I'm going to tell you and will really help you get faster times on laps.
     ~When to Shift- I think its a misconception to beginning drivers that you'll go faster if you shift up when you hit redline. Well this isn't true, when you look at your car's HP graph, I guarantee that you'll see that both lines drop right before redline, and continues to drop until redline. This is saying that right before you hit redline your car is losing power, which will cost you time wise. Then when do I shift you say? well look at your car's HP Graph again look where the line reaches its highest, this is called the peak where the car is using almost or all of its power, this is where you shift.

I hope this guide will help you in future tunings, and maybe some thought to be completed tunings.

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Kev, its always appreciated when someone steps up and offers advice and well detailed guide. Thanks for that.

I have a question or two, on your method, if you don't mind.

I suggest tuning your car into a 4 speed or a 5 speed...So, adjust the Final Drive slider to put gear 4 or 5 at the high RPM line (6000 in your example)?

With the top speed from step 2 try to get that speed near the end of your last gear, so right before you leave the OPR you've hit top speed for the track...Top speed, example 185 mph, should then come at some point at max HP (6000?) or somewhere near that in your new top gear (4 or 5, depending on the Final Drive adjustment made in step 3). Continue to adjust the new top gear until that speed is attained?

Thanks, again Kev, for your Gear Tuning Tips (that works for me).

Cheers!

 

 

 

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"Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance."

You should always try to get the top speed as close to the peak HP as possible so you'd be using all or almost all of the power that your car has to offer.

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I found this to actually be one of the best gearing guides I've read, especially for how short it is. Good work. I'll be favoriting it for sure. One question though, the in game chart doesn't have those helpful little green bars. Whats a good way to determine the OPR without them?

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My Work

Yes, thank you.

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The Legend Lives On

In Career, open My Cars, go to the detail list of the car you are tuning (X button), scroll to the HP rating, next tab will be the RPM for max HP, then Torque, next tab will be the RPM for peak Torque. Those are your "two green lines".

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"Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance."

k e v i n2223:

     ~When to Shift- I think its a misconception to beginning drivers that you'll go faster if you shift up when you hit redline. Well this isn't true, when you look at your car's HP graph, I guarantee that you'll see that both lines drop right before redline, and continues to drop until redline. This is saying that right before you hit redline your car is losing power, which will cost you time wise. Then when do I shift you say? well look at your car's HP Graph again look where the line reaches its highest, this is called the peak where the car is using almost or all of its power, this is where you shift.

This is not correct.

While it is true that your engine is making less power above peak-power RPM, that doesn't mean you should shift up yet. Shifting up means that your RPMs are going to drop. Don't just look where you are at in the current gear, look where shifting is going to put you RPM-wise in the next gear. It may even turn out that you are best off shifting well after redline being that it's not going to damage your engine in the game.

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Click image to see the car's sale thread.
GT: EXOR x Bart x
http://www.exodusracing.net/ - Unassisted Racing at its Finest

haha i always thought my way was more effective, but thanks for correcting me ^^

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awesome guide mate thanks a lot - i've never fully understood the gears side of things but i'm gonna give this a go and see what the results are.

i've just spent a lot of time working out camber and castor settings using the telemetry and have written up a rough guide which i may put up on here some time.

ben

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GT: benney d

Might wanna supplement this guide with the info presented here

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I don't understand the talk about 4-5 speed gearboxes.

Say if I have a g'box with 6 gears, how do I go about turning it into a 5 speed? I can;t see any options anywhere? I feel like I'm catching the wrong end of the stick here. What have I missed? :P Also, if you could explain a bit more about Final Drive, that'd be awesome.

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GamerTag: TehBluebear

It's just adjusting the gear ratios around so that you are only using four or five of the gears, instead of all six.

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SCCA Spec Miata
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That's funny, I thought FM2 was about the racing...

TehBluebear:

Also, if you could explain a bit more about Final Drive, that'd be awesome.

As I see it, Final Drive ratio pretty much just affects how steeply your gears climb (i.e. the angle of those little lines that you see as you're tuning your transmission).

Say for example, you want your engine to stay above 5000 rpm, and you want to use six gears. So you adjust your individual gear ratios so that each one starts above 5000. But then sixth gear tops out at 137 mph. Boohoo, you wanted it to top out at 150 mph. Well, the way to get it there would be to adjust your final drive ratio. You may have to do some tweaking back and forth as changing the final drive will change what RPM each gear starts at, but that's no big deal.

 

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Click image to see the car's sale thread.
GT: EXOR x Bart x
http://www.exodusracing.net/ - Unassisted Racing at its Finest

aha, so it's not a 'physical' modification persee, it's just about ignoring the sixth gear, and concentrating on the 5 gears.

Cheers for the other information too guys! Hopefully I'll be able to get my Lotus Carlton tweaked pretty damn nice. It's a bee-hatch keeping it at A850 though...

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GamerTag: TehBluebear

TehBluebear:

aha, so it's not a 'physical' modification persee, it's just about ignoring the sixth gear, and concentrating on the 5 gears.

Cheers for the other information too guys! Hopefully I'll be able to get my Lotus Carlton tweaked pretty damn nice. It's a bee-hatch keeping it at A850 though...

The way I tune out for 5 gears is to "lay down" the 6th gear: extend the gear ratio so far forward that it falls all the way down the graph. Then, I tune out the five remaining gears without the 6th gear interfering with my work.

Then, when all is said and done, I bring the 6th gear back up and make it an economy gear whose sole purpose is to run the car at lower revs during an long-distance oval race. You will lose a little speed in 6th gear, but it'll extend your fuel in the long run. Of course, its use only applies in those few situations in that one kind of a race, so for all intents and purposes the 6th gear never gets used.

TehBluebear:

I don't understand the talk about 4-5 speed gearboxes.

Say if I have a g'box with 6 gears, how do I go about turning it into a 5 speed? I can;t see any options anywhere? I feel like I'm catching the wrong end of the stick here. What have I missed? :P Also, if you could explain a bit more about Final Drive, that'd be awesome.

You have your gears in the gear box, but then you also have another gear in the differential. Changing how many teeth that last gear has is changing the final drive ratio. Adjusting it changes ALL your gears. Have a play around and just keep an eye on the transmission graph in game :)

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Understanding how the Final Drive works for you in-game will be easier if you imagine the lines on the gearing graph extended all the way back down to the apex (the game chops off the lines according to the car speed scale). Adjusting the Final Drive ratio will compress or spread that "fan" pattern of lines.

If you watch the top replays you will notice that most of them use 4 gears or less.  On short tracks like Road Atlanta Short, Maple Valley Short etc... 2 gears is optimal.  5 gears is way too many.  I personally never use more than 3, and I run within a second of the top times consistantly. In the muscle cars, most people use 2 gears maximum, sometimes only 1.

For racing, you may need to add 1 extra gear to get off the line, but once you are rolling, less gears generally = faster laps.

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TRC factory:

If you watch the top replays you will notice that most of them use 4 gears or less.  On short tracks like Road Atlanta Short, Maple Valley Short etc... 2 gears is optimal.  5 gears is way too many.  I personally never use more than 3, and I run within a second of the top times consistantly. In the muscle cars, most people use 2 gears maximum, sometimes only 1.

For racing, you may need to add 1 extra gear to get off the line, but once you are rolling, less gears generally = faster laps.

Why is that, Factory? It seems counterintuitive. I think most folks understand there is a loss of acceleration/speed when you disengage the clutch, but is it really that significant? At first glance, it would seem to be wiser to keep the car in its optimal power band with more gears, rather than running long gears. Thanks for the post!

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wow i never thought so many people would post =D

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