Spring going SPROING big dangerous.

Highlighting the parts is really a good idea, makes it very clear, and when in motion it makes a lot of sense

Hi Empty, I appreciate you do this as I think it is good to take some of the fear out of car setup! But I just want to point one thing. 2:12 'ARB typically felt mid corner' really isn't correct. What changes the balance of the car is the front versus rear roll stiffness. Typically this is the combination of springs and bars. The stiffer side takes more of the weight transfer and that side will have the most unevenly loaded tires. If you picture a car from above, you can imagine a side force from the front tires and from the rear tires. If the front forces are higher, you have more oversteer. If the rear forces are higher you have more understeer. Load sensitivity is a wierd tire thing that comes down to the axle that has the most evenly loaded tires, gives the most grip. So a stiff front with the inside tire almost off the ground relies on one tire to provide the grip. One heavily loaded tire has less grip than two tires under medium load. The instant you are cornering, be that trail braking, mid corner or corner exit, the weight transfer is divided over the front and rear axle, and you feel this 'stiff front = understeer, stiff rear = oversteer' balance almost immediately. It isn't 'more so' mid corner. And this stiffness is literally an addition of springs + bars. In some sims literally a spring of 80 and bar of 20 will have the same pure cornering feel (ish) as a spring of 100 with a disconnected bar. We're ignoring many things here but in the simplest view this is true. I did make a rambling video about setups myself that might be worth listening to for viewers and isn't super in depth with scary spreadsheets. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f56oZqyEvbnSdZs.html But again, good to do this, a few videos like these (Aris does a nice job too) and people might learn something and save some money! :-)

Exactly the series I was awaiting for

Sim Racing Setup Basics 101 - Ep. 1 Here we go baby, instant like

Nice approach to setups. Usually it's just "adjusting this will make the car do this", and not about understanding what the parts actually do. Very helpful.

THANK YOU FOR DOING THIS. I've never understood setups and I need this.

Really nice explanation of the basics of the setup parameters, though what will help everyone make more targeted tweaks and get even more laptime on pure cornering conditions (I.e besides for example the effect of spring rates on aerodynamics and bump response), is the balance of the car, meaning the tendency to over/understeer. Let's take for example a slow steady state corner(so that the aerodynamic balance doesnt have a great effect). If in the specified corner your car understeers, you can either stiffen the rear ARB, or soften the front ARB (same for spring rates, though they affect other aspects as mentioned). In the same manner you can tweak your dampers rebound/compression for corner exit/entry respectively. Then, the tire pressure will also affect the stiffness of each axle, so for example after lowering the tire pressure on one axle, you might want to increase the ARB stiffness to counteract. This is just a simple example, but the suspension characteristics greatly influence the effect of load transfer and its distribution and can help you greatly with the setup in corners. I hope this was helpful, if anyone is interested to learn more there is plenty of reading material online about basic vehicle dynamics, or setup.

You are a legend, so glad you came back!

I usually never bothered to touch the spring rates, but then I found out that they mostly affect weight transfer. The softer the springs are in the front, the more weight you'll allow to be transferred on braking. Likewise, softening the rear springs will help stabilize the car on corner exit. When you feel like the car is too loose and oscillates too wildly when transferring weight, stiffen up those springs.

Great video. I like when you explain specifically what each thing does, instead of just saying "turning up makes it turn more and turning down makes it turn less". It's helpful to understand which things affect which sections of a corner, as well as what effects bumps, straights etc.

I LOVE this new series!!! Very in-depth and knowledgeable!

Mm yes, I know some of those words. No but seriously, this one is going into my saved videos so I can watch it again once I start understanding things a little more deeply. Thanks for making this kind of content!

Got a feeling this series will be very re-watchable. Looking forward to the rest ;)

Thanks for doing this series. Although there are a plethora of them on KZfaq, it’s always great to have setups explained from different points of view and communication styles.

Really helpful and informative. Thanks Matt, looking forward to the rest of the videos.

This looks like it'll be a great series and I'm glad to see you uploading regularly again!

This is by far the most informative video I have come across on this particular of suspension setup, so I have commented for viewer engagement =D Thank ye much!

Only having owned a driving wheel for 4-ish months now. And mostly Trial and error'ing my suspension changes in Dirt Rally 2 (XD;.) It's nice to get these videos explaining things so It makes more sense why what I'm doing is affecting things the way they are.

Great that you're covering setups after all these years ^_^ I hope they help people consider open setup racing more... if only more would recognise that until you're in the top 1% setup isn't a barrier to getting good racing and shouldn't add extra time to your practice sessions. For me the only downside to open setup racing is the first few hours driving a car, you have to figure out what your baseline is so you might need more practice time then but even so... it's not like you're going to find a new series with a type of car you've never driven before and be fast within 10-20 laps of practice just because its fixed setup anyway.

Thanks Matt, great video and look forward to learning more

I was just thinking I needed a video like this and then you post this. Thank you Empty Box & thank you universe.

Love empty box been here year's big up,

Excellent info, and more interesting and more effective than just reading the same info.

I’m with you 100% in the war on paid setups! Teach us how to set the cars up for ourselves, in Matt we trust!

Good job! Up until now I had no idea what the purpose of a damper was and now I know it is actually a verb and tells exactly what it does :). I love RBR and this helps a lot with setups there as well

I blame cars going flying through the stratosphere in iRacing on bad shocks, the springs immediately release their energy, and BOOM!!! Orbit.

Nice! Keep it up. Not very long videos which makes it easier to keep watching and absorb the information provided.

I honestly believe that I've never heard a better explanation about suspensions im all of my years of sim racing. Very good job! Short, easy to understand and yet you didn't leave out anything (at least that I'm aware of).

Nice art work with the highlights it makes very easy to understand

Great video - thank you! And those 1967 F1 cars are machines of beauty.

Watching a compressed spring go through a roof is a thing. Definitely fucking scared the shit out of everyone in the shop.

Thank you, I'm looking forward to your next videos on the subject.

Nice. A new 101 series.

Bring these back please, Matt 😁😁😁

Thank God someone explains this finally....

Looking forward to more videos like this!

Good stuff man!

Really helpful, thank you

Thanks Matt this is fantastic!

Comment for that algorithm

Cant wait. Learned smt again. Thx

Thank you!

I feel like Empty box made this as a response to my comment where i could never figure out how to do car setup stuff.

thank you

3:35 Star Trek TOS USS Enterprise bridge sound

Great series so wanted this. I use the forza app but I'm experimenting to "fine tune" my tunes. LOL

I get confused when adjusting front and rear suspension. I am great at making legends cars undrivable by turning them into tractors or amusement park teapots!

I saw that you have this video and the tire/alignment video, but nothing after that. Do you plan on continuing this series?

This was really informative for the newbs. I think its pretty pitiful that people don't know how to set up a car. Once you learn, you can have a competitive car in 10 minutes.

So if the car is understeering, what can I change that won't make the car twitchy and unpredictable later in the run...

As a NASCAR fan, could you maybe translate some NASCAR terms? Is the "track-bar" the same as the anti-roll bar? Likewise is a "wedge" adjustment the same as the blades? Cheers dude, thanks for the info!

what the fuck? this is awesome!

Dude where did you go?

Not very helpful. Just mentioning car parts, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t explain the affects that they have. What about the balance of grip??

felippe 2009 = ( from barrichello brawn ...

Which setting do I change if I don't know the track? Someone, who is 10 sec faster than me, said WheelRate should be high. :)))

My question is how do you know all this? Is this gathered from your racing knowledge or are you mechanically inclined fella?

setting up a car is a black art, i kinda know the theory but it doesn seem to work for me in practise lol