My MoTeC Project and Explanation

[Spad]

I have decided to make my MoTeC Project available for people to download if they would like to. Below you will also find an explanation on how to use it! This will work in GTR, GTR2, Race07 and GTR Evo. I am not sure if it works with GTL as I have never tired it.

You can get it HERE. This needs extracting to My Documents\MoTeC Projects

The bits you want to be most interested in is the Tyres, Engine, Suspension, SetUp and Brakes. These can be brought up by using the drop down dialogue box to select then you can go to individual Worksheets. (Shown Below)



Tyres

Here you want to be on the Tyre Temps Tab. Basically this is to make sure that you have the temps correct and evenly balanced across the tyres. The outside needs to be colder than the inner with the center roughly the average of the inner and outer temps. You balance these out by adjusting tyre pressure and camber angle. (Shown Below)



Next look at the Friction Circle. This shows you where your grip is on the tyres. It give you an idea of where you can push and where grip is available and that the tyres are doing there job! This is mainly for use with your camber settings to get more lateral (sideways) grip.

Engine

All you need to checking here is the Engine Worksheet and concentrate on the Engine RPM Graph. You use this to make sure you are not over revving the engine. What ever car you drive has a Max BHP@RPM level. So as an example the car you drive has 600bhp @ 6000RPM. Here you can check that you are not taking the revs over 6000rpm. If you go over the 6000rpm mark you will start to lose power. To stop this from happening you need to be changing gear at or just above where your max BHP to RPM is.



Suspension

Here you need to be on the Damper Overview Worksheet. Here you can see if your dampers are working correctly. Ideally all the 4 graphs need to be green as shown in the below image. This means you have your dampers dialed in correctly. If they are yellow they are under damped (need to be speeded up) and if they are blue they are over damped (need to be slowed down). Each individual wheels can be viewed by looking at Damper FL, Damper FR etc. The left hand side of the graph is rebound and the right is bump. Ideally rebound should be higher than bump. (Shown below)



Next is Suspension % Tab. These are the percentage rates for each wheel. Essentially what you need here is symmetry for each of the front wheels and rear ones to. If you have kinks in them you use your damper settings to iron them out. The left hand side of the graph is Rebound and you need to use the rebound settings to iron out kinks. The left is Bump and you do the same for that. As you can see the front dampers need raising on both bump and rebound. If the kink is out then you lower it. (Shown below)



Now you need to be on the Front Susp Tab (Rear Sus Tab is the same). From top to bottom. First is Ride height. Obviously this is self explanatory. If you are at zero then the car is bottoming out so raise the ride height! Next down is Damper Position. This shows if you are running out of damper/spring movement. Ideally you want to be running your springs as soft as possible and if the graph is not at showing at zero then you can soften your springs more to get better grip. Finally we are at Damper Velocity. These are the speeds at which your dampers are working. As you dial in your dampers this graph will become as it is in the picture, all close to the center. If it is not close to then center then you need to speed up your dampers. Top half is bump and bottom is rebound so if you have spikes in them you need to tighten the respective side. But remember you will get high spikes when you ride curbs or go over bumps in the track. This graph runs in conjunction with the damper over view and as you can see they are all in the green and then on the Damper Velocity graph it shows that the dampers are not getting big spikes and are close to center. This mean I have the dampers nicely dialed in! You do exactly the same to check the Rear Dampers/Springs/Ride Height with the Rear Sus worksheet. (Shown below)



Set Up

The main ones i use on this worksheet is Over-steer and Fuel. Over-steer is good to see where you are getting it and then you can look at the Dampers and Springs to see where to adjust them to dial out the over-steer. To spot over-steer look in the top half of the Over-steer graph. If there are any spikes this indicates over-steer. (Shown below)



Fuel is to check how much fuel you are using per lap. This is good for doing pit strategies as it gives you a more accurate reading of how much fuel you are using rather than using the in game pit strategy for calculating your fuel at stops. Altho be warned sometimes it can be wrong and this is especially so when using the fuel multiplier! Keep a close eye on this if you are using the fuel multiplier!

Track Report

Most of these are obvious but the one you want is the Timing Tab. This shows your lap time but more importantly your rolling minimum, this is what you should be lapping at and also Eclectic which is potentially your fastest lap if add all your fastest sectors together. (Shown below)



Brakes

This worksheet is used for making sure you are not locking any wheels. This is checked by the top two graphs. If you have spikes dropping wheel speed to zero then you need to adjust brake balance, dampers or spring rates to compensate for this. You can also zoom it in and select a certain point and then jump to the Suspension page and Front or Rear Sus Worksheet and see if you have any spikes there to see inf the damper velocities are to high or you are running out of spring/damper travel because this causes lock ups under braking. This is because the respective wheel looses grip as it is not in touch with the tarmac and locks up or you are just plainly hammering the brakes to hard! Next you can check the Brake Pedal Pos Graph and Accelerator Pedal Pos Graph. When you are braking ideally you never want to be off the the throttle. You can check this here. You will find that keeping a small amount of throttle on while braking gives you better control under braking but more importantly you can go harder and later on the brakes. Also having your dampers correctly dialed in will give you much better braking as they are keeping the tyres in touch with the tarmac and generating longitudinal (braking) grip! (Shown below)



Also have a look at the Virtual Dash as this can be fun to

I hope this gives you guys some idea on how good a tool Motec really is and helps you to faster laps!

There where going to be a few more images but I can't put them all up as I am only allowed to do 10 images at once.

Spad

[Spad]

Here's also la little something on car set ups I posted in the Race07 forum.

http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...0&postcount=12

This will also be relevant for GTL, GTR, GTR2, GTR-Evo and rFactor!

[Alexi99]

Very nice Spad. I plan on checking this out over the weekend.
Alex

[impulse05]

Hey great job on this.

[Paul_in_DC]

Good info. Thanks!

[gears]

Wow! Great work! Thank you!

[JesterGT]

Very clear explanation of a complex set of numbers. Think I'll give motec a go now...

[gazman]

good one spad

[gears]

Spad:

I understand everything you posted except the suspension %.

As you can see the front dampers need raising on both bump and rebound.

I don't understand how you can tell that from that graph or the numbers on the suspension % screen. The damper graphs are easy, but can you explain what numbers your are looking at in the suspension % screen? Thanks.

[miriam]

same to me! a closer explanation would be fine! and: if the colors on the damper graphs are e.g. yellow, do i have to set the numbers for dampers higher or lower? i mean the number you click in setup...

what about ride high? do you try to set you car down on front and rear as far as possible or do you set your rear higher? if so, how much higher?

THX, great great explanation!

[Spad]

The Suspension Histogram is read by looking at the time the spring spends moving. The further away from zero it is the faster it moves and the closer to zero it is the slower it moves. From this you can tell how fast or slow the dampers are controlling the springs. Ideally toy want all four wheel running in symmetry.

What you need to do is get nice cone where the springs are moving at similar speeds. It's all done using damper settings and also a adjust thing spring rates but more so dampers as it is these that control the rate or speed at which the spring moves. To quick you will have the wider graphs and to slow and they will be very close. These basically equate to over damped (wide) ad under damped (close). Under damped makes the car wallow and feel sluggish and slow on turn entry and exit where as over damped will make the car feel very skittish and unstable over bumps and feel over active on turn entry and exit etc.

Experiment by setting the dampers also slow (low damper setting) as possible and then go to the other extreme by running them as Fast (high dampers setting) as possible. Also try different spring rates to.

[JacoRoux]

Great work spad, I played with it this weekend, and by far the best Motec project to date.

I am busy working on a setup application that will also help with the interpretation of the Motec data, and your project will work great. By I have a few questions as well.

I spent a lot of time on the Damper Overview Worksheet, and what I have seen, that the Damper Pos is directly related to the ride height. If you lift the car up, the damper graphs get more green and even blue. what is the relation between the Damper Pos and the Ride Height. and I am not talking while you corner, but more when driving in a straight line, If you lift the car, you get a much higher damper pos.

[Spad]

Yes they are...

The springs support the weight of the car so they have a big impact on how it affects the ride height. It's not just ride height that determines whether a car bottoms out or not.

For instance at Monza on the run down to the Ascari Chicane you will find that if you run very low ride height and very soft springs you will get the car bottoming out a lot. This is because the springs are soft and bottoming out causing the car to ground because they are not supporting its weight fully! So what you do is you increase ride height to cure this. Some people place packers in to stop this from happening but from what I have read using packers can alter the balance of the car sometimes drastically so. I suppose packers are a personal thing as to whether or not you use them, myself... I never use them.

I have just done these images to demonstrate it. I took an F1 car out around Monza in GTR2 to do these images to give you an idea. I first set the ride hide to absolute minimum and fully softened the springs and then all i did the second time out was run the springs to fully stiff. I used the F1 cars because they demonstrate this principle best:

Min Ride Height and Fully Soft Springs:



Min Ride Height and Fully Stiff Springs:


As you can see with springs fully soft and min ride height the car bottoms out constantly but running them fully stiff it supports the weight of the car better and prevents it from bottoming out! It is not always ride height that causes a car to bottom out! You also check this to make sure you are not running out of spring or damper movement because that pretty much has the same effect as the car scraping the tarmac... loss of time and speed!

I normally set the springs full soft or maybe one or two clicks above and set the ride height to minimum. Then I got out and test it and then makes changes to the ride height if necessary.

I suppose really I should change the header for that to Spring Position!

[JacoRoux]

Thanks a million, makes a lot more sense now.

Will play around with it again tonight

[JacoRoux]

So here is my next question:

If you look at this image below.


EDIT: this is just the image I copied from above, this is not my own graph

I find that my rear suspension is perfectly green and not too wide, (although I am not sure what is TOO wide). The front however has a lot of yellow, This tells me that the the front is under damped. What is the most important on this picture. The color or the width? and what is the best way to get it green from yellow, when you raise the ride height, it makes it green, but when I change the spring and damp settings I don't get any major changes to the color.

Suggestions?

[Spad]

Originally Posted by JacoRoux

So here is my next question:

EDIT: this is just the image I copied from above, this is not my own graph

I find that my rear suspension is perfectly green and not too wide, (although I am not sure what is TOO wide). The front however has a lot of yellow, This tells me that the the front is under damped. What is the most important on this picture. The color or the width? and what is the best way to get it green from yellow, when you raise the ride height, it makes it green, but when I change the spring and damp settings I don't get any major changes to the color.

Suggestions?

Right everything effects everything else: tyre pressures, dampers, spring rates, anti roll bar (ARB) rates and its one big balancing act and it gets interesting . What I would suggest you try is running your front springs a click or two harder and also check the Front Damper Position too and also have a look at front tyre pressures and front ARB rates. You will find that on most cars you will run slightly stiffer springs or an overall stiffer front end than the rear because to have it any other way will just induce horrendous over-steer, I have found this out to an almost comical level! Some of the spins I've had have been monumental to say the least (especially under braking)!

WIDE = Fast and NARROW = Slow. Again its a balancing act to get them just right to how you like them. I normally aim for about 100'ish milliseconds (ms) in both bump and rebound on the Damper overview but anything over say 200'ish is starting to get to quick and anything under 50'ish ms is getting to slow. You will know when your dampers are set right because you will be able to literally point the car where you want it to go!

PS.

Another thing to remember about ride to is wings! This is because they cause down force and that pushes the car into the tarmac!

[JacoRoux]

Could some please shed some light on the difference between fast bump & slow bump, as well as fast rebound and slow rebound. Do you always change them together or what does each one mean?

Thanks

[Spad]

Originally Posted by JacoRoux

Could some please shed some light on the difference between fast bump & slow bump, as well as fast rebound and slow rebound. Do you always change them together or what does each one mean?

Thanks

This is taken from another post I did:

Originally Posted by Spad

Springs - Ideally you always want to run your springs as soft as possible. This is because you want grip and soft springs offer more grip (hard spring increase tyre temps and wear) BUT... Springs can also effect the under/over-steer balance too. You will find running soft front and hard rear springs will generate over-steer while hard front and soft rear will lean more towards under-steer. You can also use spring rates to a certain extent for weight transfer of the car. So as an example if you are getting the car under-steer on corner entry/exit you can take one click of front spring off or if its over-steer you take one click off the rear. I would not do any more than one click for effecting weight transfer or you will make matters worse!

Dampers - They do 2 major things. 1. They effect how the weight transfer of the car is effected on corner entry and exit. This is done buy slowing down or speeding up how the weight is transferred from front to rear. Slow rebound and Bump handle this. As an example you are entering a right handed corner (corner entry) and you get over-steer on. What is happening is the weight of the car is transferring to quickly to the front of the car and the arse goes light and you over steer so you need to slow it down. You do this by managing the slow side of your dampers. So you would is slow the weight transfer down by speeding up left front slow bump and slowing down right rear slow rebound. This essentially slows the weight transfer from one corner of the car to the other. Have a look at the below image to give you some idea of how to correct over-steer/under-steer on corner entry/exit by using your dampers. I would recommend printing this off as it's a bitch to remember!



2. They control the rate at which the springs work. In popular terms these are called shock absorbers but they absorb no shock at all. Dampers control the rate at which the springs absorb shocks (fast bump and rebound). You use Fast Rebound and Bump keep the tyres firmly in touch with the tarmac. Fast Bump - This is the dampers controlling the rate at which the spring compresses as it absorbs a shock of a bump in the track and rebound is the damper controlling the rate at which the spring expands after the bump in the track. It basically controls the rate the wheel rises and lowers. Get this right and the tyres stay contact with the tarmac and generate more grip. Get them wrong the tyres will just skitter over the bumps on a track. As a rule of thumb you should always run rebound quicker than bump because you want the tyre back down quicker than it rises!

NOTE: Remember dampers work in speed rates (fast and slow) not how soft or how hard you run them!

Basically the Rebound setting is the Damper controlling the rate at which the spring expands and bump is the rate at which the spring compressed. Also Fast Bump and Rebound is for when the car is going over curbs and bumps in the track and Slow Bump and Rebound is for controlling the weight transfer and how it effects the car.

You can also use the Fast Bump and Rebound for curing over-steer/under-steer when going over bumps in the track or curbs. So for bump under-steer you slow the front fast damper settings and speed up the rear and vice versa for the over-steer!

Dampers also effect how the car alters under acceleration and deceleration to. When you accelerate the cars nose rise and rear falls and vice versa for deceleration.

[JacoRoux]

Thanks, I just printed about 100+ pages of setups, and will go and study that

[gears]

Spad:

Can you come over to my house and walk me through all this?

Just a short plane ride across the pond - I'll provide the bangers and mash and the spotted dick

Seriously though, thank you so much for your patient explanations. I think I'm getting the hang of this

[[RWTD]-Barbie-[GKR]]

You boys got a spreadsheet to drive that car too?

[Spad]

It's pleasure to help!!

When I started sim racing (the original Geoff Crammond's GP) on computers I had no internet or anything so I had to stick my face in books or badger people I knew who knew about cars and how they work!

Also if any of you guys are interested we will be host a Sunday Cup using cars and tracks from GTR-Evo/Race07 this coming Sunday evening. We will be having a race every Sunday with a different car and track. Hopefully soon we will be introducing a league using GTR-Evo/Race07 to.

Head over to www.thegamersedge.co.uk if you fancy joining in with us!

[markspeed]

I'm curious how you made your project? Frankly I'm lost with Motech. I don't know how to make a project, and how to log races, tests or time trials for analysis.

[eslostdevil]

Cool stuff~try it tonight