Forza Horizon 5 – Build & Tuning Tips (Brake, Aero, Gearing, and more)

This contains build & tuning tips (brake, aero, gearing, and more) for Forza Horizon 5.

Build & Tuning Tips

Building Tips

Conversions

Engine
- Keep stock engine, only upgrade engine if pushing to another class
Drivetrain
- More viable to keep original drivetrain
Aspiration
- If you can make power goal without turbo, do it
- Turbo’s give higher max power but only in higher rpm
- Supercharger give less max power but through entire rev range

Aero

Front
- Try to build without front aero if you can but, if you get understeer use it
Rear
- Whenever it drops points put it on as you can tune away the downforce

Tires & Rims

Tire Compound
- Rally/Off Road/Drift
  - Use the associated tires
- Road Racing
  - AWD cars tire compound matters less
  - RWD cars 1 or 2 tire compound upgrades is nice usually
  - Slick tyres are rarely worth it unless rivals racing
    - Semislick is preferred as you may have rain or offroad
- Front tire width
  - Eliminated understeer
- Rear tire width
  - Gives more grip to rear
  - More worth it to upgrade than front
- Rims
  - Use these to adjust your PI (PI is the car ranking system – A-class is 800)
- Wheel Spacing
  - Makes the car feel more stable on the side that is spaced
  - Ok to have just the rear spaced as it’ll feel more stable
  - Used to adjust the oversteer/understeer balance

Drivetrain

Clutch
- Doesn’t matter much on manual w/ clutch
Transmission
- Sports transmission is usually best option as you rarely need to adjust individual gears
Driveline
- Used to adjust final PI points
Differentials
- 0 PI
- Sport is worthless
- Use race for race
- Use rally for rally and any offroad that’ll involve some onroad
- Go for off road for fully dedicated off road (Dune jumpers & Rock climbers)

Suspension

Brakes
- Nice to have it, it is worth it about 90% of the time
Suspension
- Worth it to get race as it improves handling and unlocks tuning options
ARB (Anti-roll bars)
- Extremely useful for fine point tuning
Roll cages / Chassis reinforcement
- Full rollcage is usually heavy and not worth it
- Rule of thumb, for each class you upgrade your car over its original class, add one rollcage upgrade
  - ie. if you take a B-class to A-class add 1 chassis reinforcement
Weight reduction
- Forza rewards min/max so go all in or not at all
- Power builds are usually favored on online racing
- “Adding power makes you faster on the straights, removing weight makes you faster everywhere”

Engine

Spend engine upgrades last
Intake & exhaust first
Oil & cooling
Turbo & displacement upgrades for last
Cams usually cost too much PI points
Flywheel is a great PI adjuster

Final Upgrade Tips

If you have made it to the end without max PI, go back and adjust little things like, Rims, tire width, Driveline, Flywheel.
Focus your builds on first unlocking tuning options then getting right tires, transmission, suspension setup.
If you have a lot of spare PI then go with brakes, clutch, adjustable aero.
Spend final PI on reducing weight or focus on adding power.

Tuning Tips

General

Locked tuning setups (Greyed out in tuning menu)
- Means you do not have the required options unlocked in the upgrade menu
- Look for the upgrades with the yellow unlock box
- Not all cars will have the ability to make every tuning adjustment

Differential

Acceleration
- Front
  - Lower % preferred
  - Go for 10-50%
  - Low on track builds, high on rally builds
  - Higher setting = understeer
  - very important for FWD
- Rear
  - Higher % Preferred
  - Go for between 50-90%
  - Higher power cars prefer higher of that range
  - Higher setting = more oversteer
Decelerations
- Front/Rear
  - Never set higher than acceleration setting
  - Usually go for 0%
  - Lower is more responsive but less stable
  - Higher is more stable with entering corners
Center
- Makes car feel more FWD or RWD
- Set between 50-80%
- Rally/Offroad is closer to 50%
- Track is closer to 80%
- 70% is great starting value for many cars

Brake

Balance
- Brake balance is reverse
  - Sliding to “front” gives more braking to the rear tires
Pressure
- Higher Values mean quicker locking/ABS engagement
These settings have little effect so not a big deal to adjust

Aero

Very unimportant on cars below B-class
Front
- Eliminates understeer, makes car feel more responsive
Rear
- More cornering grip
- Can make car less responsive by adding understeer

Usually end up increasing downforce all around
The faster you go, the bigger affect downforce will have, if you want more grip give more downforce

Damping

Rebound Stiffness
- Stock is usually pretty good
Bump Stiffness
- Usually comes too stiff
- Should be between 50-75% of rebound stiffness
- Race suspension defaults to 63%
- You typically want bump towards the low end only rasing this if you notice the car bouncing/unstable
General Rule
- If your rear end keeps sliding, increase front rebound and bump or reduce rear rebound and bump

Springs

Springs
- Front
  - Low front = oversteer
- Rear
  - Low rear = Understeer
- General
  - Used to adjust over/understeer
  - Heavier/lower car should have stiffer springs
  - Soft suspension is less responsive but more grippy
  - Stiff suspension is more responsive but more likely to loose grip
  - AWD/FWD
    - More likely for understeer so lower front stiffness a bit
- Ride Height
  - General
    - Lower is better
      - Set as low as possible without bottoming out

ARB (Anti-roll bars)

General
- Controls entry+mid corner balance
- Very noticeable on AWD+FWD
- RWD cars
  - Aim for half way between soft and middle on front
  - Aim for stiff and middle on rear
- Front
  - Low front will result in oversteer
- Rear
  - Low rear will have understeer

Allignment

Camber
- When you are track racing camber is good
- Race suspension usually gives too much so bump it down a couple in front & rear
- Adjust via looking at the telemetry menu (more later on)
Toe
- General
  - Adjust sparingly
  - Toe out = oversteer, response
  - Toe in = understeer, stability
- FWD/AWD
  - 0.1-0.2 front toe out to give a little oversteer
- RWD
  - 0.1-0.2 rear toe in to keep rear stable in corner
Caster
- General
  - Higher caster adds camber while in a turn while not affecting camber on a straight
  - Keep between 4-7*

Gearing

Final Gear
- If you added power you’ll want to extend and go towards speed so the last line goes just past the end of the graph
Individual Gears
- High power RWD you may want to extend 1st & 2nd to make wheelspin less likely

Tires

Tire Pressure
- General
  - No tire wear so this setting just adjusts grip/heat
- Higher pressure feels more responsive and will loose grip quicker
- Lower pressure less response, slower loss of grip
- 26-35 psi for track
- Higher front psi is preferred (about 2-3 higher in the front)

Fine Tuning Details

General
- You need a place to test tune, the race track is a good pace
- Open Telemetry with T on pc
- On XBOX go to your setting and switch ANNA for telemetry then down on D-pad

Telemetry Tuning

Suspension
- Go to the suspension menu of the telemetry
- Fully pink is fully compressed/bottomed out, you don’t want that
- (Car can bottom out without suspension bottoming out)
- During stress the pink bar should be between 20-80%
- If it is not moving much
  - Soften the suspension
- If it is moving too much
  - Stiffen the suspension

Camber
- Go to the TIRES, MISC. menu
- Watch the camber of outside tires
- Never want to the go positive
  - Want a minimum of around -1 to -0.5
Go to the Heat menu
- Go to the Heat menu
Inside of the tire should be the hottest right around the clear to yellow color
The difference between the inside and outside of the tire should never be more than about 20*F preferred within 10-15*F
- If more than 20*F then lower the camber
- If outside is hotter than inside, add camber
- If outside and inside is hotter than middle add tire pressure
- If middle is hottest part of tire lower tire pressure

Troubleshooting

Oversteer/Understeer

Corner entry
- Understeer (A little bit of corner entry understeer is normal)
  - Adjust tire pressure
  - Lower front springs / ARBs
  - Raise toe out
  - Raise Front downforce
  - Lower differential deceleration lock
  - Raise front bump
  - Lower front rebound
  - If during braking specifically
    - Move more brake bias towards the rear of the car
      - (Move the slider towards front)
- Oversteer
  - Raise front springs / ARBs
  - Raise toe in
  - Raise differential deceleration lock
Mid Corner
- Understeer (Car will turn in well then straighten back out)
  - Raise rear ARBs & Spring rate
  - Raise front downforce
  - Raise rear rebound & bump
  - Adjust tire pressure, camber, caster
- Oversteer
  - Raise front ARBs / spring rate
  - Raise front rebound
  - Adjust tire pressure / rear camber
Corner Exit
- Understeer
  - Raise center differential rear bias
  - Raise rear acceleration lock
  - Lower front acceleration lock
- Oversteer
  - Raise center differential front bias
  - Raise front acceleration lock
  - Lower rear acceleration lock
- RWD Grip
  - Adjust downforce
  - Bump stiffness
  - Alignment
  - Throttle management

Other

Responsiveness during transitions
- Due to damping and anti roll bars
Car gets thrown off via bumps / curbs
- Lower bump stiffness
Tire temps arn’t getting hot enough
- Increase downforce
- Add toe
Cold tires and understeer
- Toe out all around
Cold tires and oversteer
- Toe in all around
Too bouncy and shifting weight
- Increase bump damping and spring stiffness
Bad braking
- Lessen front camber
- Increase caster
- Move brake balance towards front wheels
- Stiffening suspension to the front
Low top speed
- Adjust Aero
- Adjust final gear

Conclusion

Big thanks to HokiHoshi where I learned this information from. Here are his videos of the subject where he goes more in dept but I just created this form as these are the notes/key points from his videos.