Setup ideas for...........

[darock]

I've noticed a somewhat popular server online the last few days. It's running F3000 at Valencia07 and there has been a decent enough car count that it was worth running.

Yeah, it was bumper cars lots of times, but that seemed to be from the level of inexperience for a lot of the drivers in that car. The car isn't easy to drive with the SimBin or the default setups.

I noticed two setup changes that seemed to work, and that seemed to give a good return for the changes.

First thing I noticed was how hard it was to throttle the car out of the turns. Way too much power was being put down. They aren't dragsters, they're road racers. And in the real world, lots of teams gear up the transmissions so that 1st gear can be used on course. That sometimes makes 1st almost worthless for standing starts, but that seldom happens with light cars that have hugely powerful engines. So.............

The car really doesn't need the 9.917 first gear that shows up in the SimBin setup. I softened that sucker up quite a bit. I don't remember how low the number is so far, but the idea is to keep enough to get a decent standing start. And then to see if it's usable out of at least the tightest turns.

Online, my 1st has been enough to hole-shot most every start. Nobody has hit me from behind on the starts for sure. And I always gain on most everybody. Except a couple who wound up turning laps a couple of seconds quicker than mine.... ;) I'm betting they also retuned their gearing.

Anyway.... think about it..........

You wind up being able to tighten up the whole box. And closer ratios give you a faster transmission.

[darock]

I really didn't sweat many of the setup details on the F3000. Truth is, the sucker is so quick it's really hard to tell what's works unless it's bigtime OBVIOUS.

What was obvious was how far off the brakes were from usable for me.

I'm betting it's more than just the setup values, but setup values were what I dinked with to get a more drivable car.

I've setup my keyboard to use the UP arrow to move the brake bias forward, and the DOWN arrow to move it to the rear. And I use it ontrack while sorting out the tire pressures the first test runs in any car. It's pretty easy to do.

Just get a feel how the steering works on turnin with trail braking. If you can't possibly have any brakes while steering, then start clicking the DOWN arrow. If you can steer under braking, but the tires chatter on threshold braking in a straight line, try clicking the UP arrow.

With the F3000, I found that tuning to reduce the chattering bigtime. And hitting the brakes doesn't turn the steering wheel into a worthless piece that feels like it's been disconnected.

[darock]

Anybody found any other things about the F3000 that seems to be a slam dunk for tuning?

What else I have found is that they seem really sensitive to the other things I've tried.

[darock]

They do provide you with a really neat way to balance your car, btw.

The classical way to deal with understeer or oversteer is to soften the springs on one end of the car, or harden them on the other. The idea is to fix the end that's giving you a problem. But sometimes you can't. So you "take away" from the other end. Obviously not the best way to fix the problem.

And what happens if the tire temps show that the car really is working the tires almost perfectly, but you still can't get the sucker to turn in or somesuch?

The F3000 has a wing on the front and a wing on the back. Taa Daa

If your car won't turn in, you can crank a bit more wing into the front. And if you wish, and wanted to keep the drag numbers on the car about the same as before, you could use both wings to do the job. Crank about half what you think it needs into the front and take out the same at the back. You should wind up with about the same drag at top speed, and have accomplished about the same downforce result.

Setup stuff can be easy sometimes................