what does what

i was dialing the suspension on the 91 civic si i won and thought i would go over what the different adjustments do, in case you didn't know.

ride height- by lowering the center of gravity you can improve handling. the nice thing about video games is that you can over lower a car and not pay any of the nasty geometry affects that you do in real life. what's even nicer about turis is that there doesn't seem to be any loss of suspension stroke penalty, so you can lower at will. it affects aerodynamics more than anything else, and if you lower it too much, your car just isn't as slippery.

spring rate- spring rate is very important in gt5, as it seems to affect the balance of the car more than any other suspension mod. they're tricky to set up because too much can cause bad handling and too little can do the same. some general rules of thumb are too much front spring and you get understeer; too much rear spring, oversteer. i will, in a lot of cases use the internet to pilfer spring rates. mostly from kw (who stopped publishing their spring rates), tein (if i'm desperate) and progress (them guys is awesome).

dampers- dampers, most commonly called shocks or struts, control the movement of the spring. springs should control car movement, not dampers. for the sports suspension, you get one adjustment and it is three way adjustable (1-3, not compression, rebound, highspeed damping) front and rear. damper adjustment has similar affects as spring rate in that too much in the front can create understeer, too much in the rear, oversteer. when you buy the racing suspension, it gets a little trick because they add extension (rebound) and compression adjustment. by adjusting compression you are setting how much the damper resists being squished. you want less compression than you think you do, but not too little. extension is more of a "feel" kind of thing. you want to set this higher than compression and then test drive. if the front feels sluggish, bump it up. front rebound makes for faster turn in until you over do it, and then it just understeers. rear rebound makes the rear more responsive at turn in. too much can cause it to rotate out from under you at the end of a turn, causing corner exit oversteer. really annoying.

anti-roll bars- also known as sway bars, anti-roll bars (arns) do just that: they resist roll. they have no affect on dive or squat (forward or rearward movement) like a spring does, but they reduce side roll a great deal. in turis, a stiffer front bar adds a little bit of steering feel, but can cause understeer. a stiffer rear bar causes the rear to come around faster. these are great for adjusting balance on a car and they're less complex to adjust than springs and dampers. there are two thoughts on arbs. one is to run really stiff springs and smaller arbs, allowing the springs to do most of the work. two, the chapman method as i like to call it, is to run softer springs and larger arbs. try both and see what you like better.

camber- if you are looking straight ahead at a car, camber would be the angle created by moving the top of the tire in towards the car, or out away from the car. moving the top in towards the car is called negative camber, and positive camber is pretty useless for racing cars, so turis doesn't even allow you to use it. the more negative camber in the front, the more grip it has, until you over do it. same with the rear. while camber increases grip, it causes a loss of traction for accelerating and braking. tracks with mostly straights will benefit from less camber, a track with more turns will benefit from more camber. on rwd cars i start with -2* front and rear and adjust until i'm happy with the balance. for fwd and awd i start with -2* front, -1* rear. once i'm happy with the balance i run it on tracks and slowly increase the amount of camber until i start to run slower times. then i set it to my fastest time on that track. if i'm lazy, i just leave it at whatever it was adjusted from after i was happy with the balance and just run that on every track.

toe- toe is if you were looking straight ahead at a car and the tires either pinched in, or flared out like duck feet. here's where turis gets stupid, and always has. toe in, which is where the tire pinch in towards the center, is negative in the real world. in turis, it's positive. it's really annoying. since this is a turis blog, i'll explain what they do in turis lingo, but just kow that in real like, it's the opposite. negative toe in front will increase turn in response at a loss for straight line stability. negative toe in the rear will make you crash. except in rally where it will help the rear of the car rotate quicker. positive toe in the front will numb turn in response a little and provide greater straight line stability. it's a good thing to do on twitchy cars. positive toe in the rear will keep the rear of the car from coming around as quickly. rwd cars can benefit from this. toe is a pretty sensitive thing, and adjusting out to 1* in either direction is a big change. i start with .25* and more in whatever direction is needed in smaller increments. most of my cars have 0 toe front and rear.

so there you have it. my word explanation of what does what. i didn't give you lot of specifics because it varies from car to car, so play with things, ask people what they're using, even ask me if you'd like. i'm pretty open about sharing my settings, unlike most people.