How to tune a car in Forza Horizon 4

"Thank you for reading our Forza Horizon 4 tuning guide."

We often get asked about tuning cars within games, and probably the most talked about game at the moment is Forza Horizon.

You will learn a great deal by browsing our real world tuning site, it will give you an insight into the world of car modding and will help your appreciation of the game settings and options.

We actually quite enjoyed this game and rate it as one of the most immersive with a fantastic community and literally something for everyone. (Read our tips for the new Horizon 5 here)

We have a profile "TorqueCars", which you can find our distinctive Siberian tiger styling mod skin for most cars, we will try to add some tuning files to these, but we are not really gamers and this is not a priority for us, we have plenty of real world car tweaking to do.

Please download and like our stuff, it will help raise our reputation and profile.

So taking our real world experience and throwing it into a game was an interesting exercise.

We must firstly state that this is not all that realistic, but the game does follow the general principles of tuning and there are some interesting quirks.

With all the in game settings you need to play around test and see what difference it makes, some cars need dramatically different setups to others.

Handling mods

You have quite a few settings here to play with.

Camber will greatly help with sharp cornering, the more extreme the front camber the better the car will corner, but you need to balance this with straight line stability.

Some high power cars snake all over the road, and to avoid this set the toe in, this will help straight line stability. Generally rear wheel drive cars need a little toe in.

I tend to keep the front caster angle near the top, it gives good speed, cornering and works well with the other settings, but it does need to be set for the track and car your using so there is no hard and fast rule.

If a car doesn't turn into corners well, you can set the front toe to out, this will help with cornering. Suspension should also be a little softer at the front to help improve cornering.

Usually you only need a fractional adjustment to toe to make a major difference.

Off road cars need lots of clearance and softer suspension, otherwise it will just bounce around and roll.

You'll notice that with high and soft suspension a wheel can lift off when cornering, use the rear and front anti roll bars to reign this in.

The differential also has a bearing on a cars stability, cornering and grip, for drifting you need the rear at the max so the rear breaks away. For circuits and track work around 20% seems to work best on most setups.

Tyre pressures have a bearing on grip and handling. Increase these to get the power down, but drop them for off road vehicles if they are bouncing around too much and the handling mods are not quite cutting it.

Power tuning

The most power does not always come from largest engine. And the most speed doesn't always come from the most powerful engines.

Smaller light high revving turbos work really well on most cars. If there is a rally engine option and you can add a larger turbo, and camshaft you are on the way to creating a quick car.

Add most items available if you want the max power but if you are tuning to a power class limit then the best gains usually come from camshafts and weight reduction.

Brakes can help with cornering on tight tracks but usually it's best to focus your efforts elsewhere to boost your speed.

Dropping the rear suspension and raising the front will often give you a little more speed (Not like in the real world at all).

Gearing

Having a high top speed is not great if there isn't a road long enough that lets you get to it, so acceleration is important.

The listed top speed is not all that accurate, some cars far exceed the stated speeds and some are shown as FAILED when they actually work really well.

The most important thing is to get your gear change points right, you don't want to be changing gear constantly as it will cost you some time, and you don't want a long gear that takes ages to get your speed up.

Use the acceleration/speed slider to get a feel for the spread on offer and then tweak the ratios to get the power where you need it.

Sometimes moving the slider towards acceleration will give you a higher top speed, so it's not all that intuitive.

Low gears can be quite long as you typically won't use these much and will want to build up speed as quickly as possible.

How to win at most seasonal races

If you can fit four wheel drive it will give you a big advantage, and if this takes you over the power limit add some heavier wheels (Rim style and size), and heavier components Roll cage and oil cooler etc.

This will help drop you back into the power class limits for the race.

Take note of your max speed in each race and set the gearing to around this level, you won't gain anything by pushing it up, and might improve acceleration by dialling it back.

Don't be afraid to switch cars, some need cars that have sharp cornering, and others require high top speeds and great brakes. Use the quit event to change cars and tune and try again.

My Ferrari 599 FXX Evo tune

The Ferrari FXX Evo is currently the fastest car in the game, it will top out around 325mph, but for an in game tune that gives good acceleration this needs to drop to around 310mph.

Stability is great so you don't need any downforce and the top gear will usually hold you back so push the gearing way up to lose this gear.

Here are my settings, which I do tweak from race to race but they form a good baseline.

Tyres

• Front 55 psi rear 55 psi

Gearing

• Final drive 4.00
• 1st 1.50
• 2nd 1.08
• 3rd 0.83
• 4th 0.67
• 5th 0.55
• 6th 0.55 (For top speed you don't want the 6th gear)

Alignment

• Camber front -2.4 rear -0.7
• Toe front 0.3 rear 0.0
• Front Castor 1.0

Anti Roll bars

• Front & Rear 0.65
• Springs
• Front 71.9
• Rear 54.3
• front height 8.7
• rear height 7.0

Damping

• Front 10.0
• Rear 6.8
• Bump front 10
• Bump rear 6.5

Aero

• Front 104
• Rear 154

Brake

• Balance 50%
• Pressure 100%

Differential

• Accel 69%
• Decel 0%
• Rear acc 87%
• Rear decel 0%
• Balance 80%

Those settings should get you near the top speeds and best times, but for short twisty tracks focus on acceleration and handling, for long runs it's top speed that is more important and stabilty.

Download it using our share code "TorqueCars"

If you want to take your tuning skills into the rear world be sure to check out our fast growing site, we provide real world car tuning tips and advice for every major car model out there.

This article is flagged for an update, so please pass on specific tips below that I can include. All articles, and content was written by me, Waynne Smith TorqueCars founder. Some outlines are just too general so I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Reviews. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

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