Even if you mastered your car’s controls through a couple of guides you can take your driving to the next level with the intricate tuning system in Forza Horizon 5.
We will go over the tuning process in Forza Horizon 5 as straightforward and simple as possible in this guide so that you can start building your dream car straight away.
Remember that you don’t have to do everything in one go. Tuning is a long process with a bunch of testing and adjusting, especially when aiming at a perfect build. So take your time and enjoy the ride.
Upgrades
The first thing to do before tuning your car is to get all the necessary upgrades. Most of the tuning features are locked behind certain parts. Head to the garage and in Upgrades & Tuning -> Custom Parts select everything you need.
The following are the upgrades that will allow you to tune certain parts of your car:
- Brakes (Brake Tuning)
- Spring and Dampers (Spring, Damper, and Alignment Tuning)
- Front Anti-Roll Bars (Front Anti-Roll Bar Stiffness Tuning)
- Rear Anti-Roll Bars (Rear Anti-Roll Bar Stiffness Tuning)
- Transmission (Gear Ratio Tuning)
- Differential (Differential Tuning)
- Front Bumper (Front Bumper Downforce Tuning)
- Rear Wing (Rear Wing Downforce Tuning)
Remember to choose the right parts for the car you are building, we will touch on that more specifically in each tuning section but just keep in mind that the parts will affect the car’s performance and Performance Indicator (PI).
Alternatively, you can buy an auto upgrade that will bump you until the desired PI number and category. But there’s a chance that it won’t contain all the parts you need or won’t have the optimal choice of them.
Community Tunes
Another thing you can do is use community tunes in the “Find Tuning Setups” menu. We won’t say you can’t use them, you can, and maybe even should, to explore what others do and how they approach tuning. But you won’t be able to edit them and tailor them to your personal preference.
Testing and Telemetry Data
Although Forza Horizon 5 features stock tuning, the settings are often way different from what they should be, which is why we are making this guide.
As we said, tuning is no quick job. Something may go wrong and you will have to be ready to fix it. To make tuning easier for yourself, make sure to test your car after any changes and use the telemetry screen (we will guide you on what to look for in it) to ensure the car is running as intended.
Car Tuning
Now we are going to dive into each section of car tuning that is available in Forza Horizon 5. We will give you an explanation of what every bit affects and a few tips to perfectly tune each one of them.
Tires
Your tires are what connects the car and all its power to the road. In the tuning menu, you can change the air pressure of the front and rear tires. The more pressure you have in the tires, the more responsive your car will be. But it will also be easier to lose control if the traction breaks. The same works the other way around.
As a rule of thumb, keep the overall pressure in the range of 28-35 psi. And keep the front 2-3 psi higher than the rear. While the range may look small considering that the game allows you to increase the pressure to 55 psi, 1-2 psi can make a big difference.
Tires affect:
- Grip
- Control
On the telemetry screen, look at the heat tab. The color should not go darker than yellow under any normal racing conditions. If gets too hot, increase the pressure and the other way around. You can also change the tire compound in the car upgrades to deal with the heat.
Gearing
The gearing will decide when you should shift into a higher gear. On the graph in the bottom right you can see every gear and its effective RPMs. You can also see the estimated top speed at the end of the graph. The gears may not be reaching the top speed and this is what we want to fix. Especially if you added a lot of extra power.
Adjust the “Final Drive” (that controls all gears) and move it towards speed until the gear lines reach the top speed. Now you can reach its top speed but this comes at a cost of acceleration. So it’s really a question of whether you actually need that top speed and whether will you be able to reach it.
Gearing affects:
- Acceleration
- Top Speed
Drive around and get a feel of your gears. If you feel like some gears accelerate too fast/slow, adjust them individually in the tuning menu. This way you can keep the balance between the speed and acceleration.
Alignment
The purpose of the wheel alignment is to ensure as much contact with the ground. Camber changes the wheel’s vertical angle. The toe changes the wheel’s horizontal angle. The caster changes the suspension’s vertical angle.
Lower camber deals with understeer and higher with oversteer. Start at about -0.5° to -1° on each side. Slight changes to toe can drastically affect your car so we would not recommend touching it. If you lack stability you can add 0.1° or 0.2° to both but be very careful. The front caster can go to 7° as it is beneficial across the board.
Alignment affects:
- Grip
- Oversteer
- Understeer
- Stability
In the tire telemetry, make sure that when cornering, the camber does not go positive under any conditions. If it does, add more negative camber.
There are a few more conditions to check at the telemetry heat screen:
- Make sure that the inner side of the tires is hotter than the inner by no more than 20°F. If it is more than that, decrease the camber
- If the outer tires are hotter, increase the camber
- If the middle is the hottest, drop the tire pressure
- If the middle is the coldest, increase the tire pressure
Antiroll Bars
Anti-roll bars control the car’s body movement when cornering. Because of that, it has a high effect on understeer and oversteer. RWD cars don’t benefit as much from this tuning though so address it if you are working on FWD or AWD car.
A good rule of thumb is to set the front halfway between the minimum and stock. As for the rear, put it halfway between maximum and stock.
Anti-roll bars affect:
- Stability
- Understeer
- Oversteer
Springs
The springs control the car’s weight transfer and will adjust how the car feels through corners. It is another good way to deal with understeer and oversteer.
To deal with understeer (AWD and FWD cars), lower the front springs. To deal with oversteer (RWD), lower the rear springs. You want to lower the ride height for improved cornering. Drop it down to about 4.6 on both front and rear.
Springs affect:
- Control
- Grip
- Oversteer
- Understeer
On a suspension telemetry screen make sure that the suspension is not hitting the top too much. If it does, increase the ride height. Do the same if you feel like the car is bottoming out (through noise and feel).
Damping
The car’s damping prepares it for imperfect road conditions. Bumps, sudden weight transfers, and uneven surfaces. Bump is the spring’s compression and rebound is the spring’s release.
By default, damping settings are tuned well by the game. The only thing you can do is make sure that the bump stiffness is around 60% of the rebound stiffness. That’s all.
Damping affects:
- Stability / Bounce
- Oversteer
- Understeer
Aero
Your aero settings revolve around the downforce created by the aero parts you installed. The use of it is very simple, you either go for cornering or top speed. This setting becomes more important on B+ class cars with high top speeds. For lower-end cars, you don’t really need to adjust this setting.
Adjusting aero heavily depends on the track. You can start by slightly increasing downforce all around. But too much front and rear can promote oversteer and understeer respectively.
Aero affects:
- Handling
- Top Speed
Brake
To put it simply, the more power you put in your car the more fine-tuned brakes you need to handle that power. However, you don’t really need to work with these settings for your tune.
What you can do is adjust the brake balance. If you shift it towards the front the car will be more stable but may cause understeer. Moving balance to the rear will make the car less table and promote oversteer.
Brakes affect:
- Braking Distance
- Stability
- Oversteer
- Understeer
Differential
The most complicated part of this guide and tuning in Forza Horizon 5 is the differential. Depending on your car, you will have front, rear, and center diffs available for tuning. All of them play a big part in creating the oversteer/understeer balance.
For the front acceleration, you want just about 10-15%. A higher setting will create understeer but is more beneficial on rally cars or if you feel like you need the understeer. The rear differential acceleration will promote oversteer and the highest you can go on it is 50-90%. The more power you have, the more acceleration you want. Deceleration settings are less important, you can start as low as 0%. Higher deceleration means more stability and lower means more control.
Center diff moves the power to the front or rear making it feel more like an FWD or RWD (even though it’s actually AWD). Setting it to the rear means more oversteer, and setting it to the front means more understeer. Generally, keep more to the rear for racing on the track. Around 70%
Differential affects:
- Control
- Stability
- Oversteer
- Understeer
