Forza Horizon 5: Build & Tuning Tips

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Here is a guide on how to build and tune in Forza Horizon.

Note: This guide was created by Picklechunks. which notes from watching HokiHoshi’s amazing youtube videos (the end of this guide).

 

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

 

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


Thanks to PickleChunks for his great tips, all credit to his effort. you can also read the original guide from Steam Community. enjoy the game.

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1 thought on “Forza Horizon 5: Build & Tuning Tips”

  1. Thank you so much for putting the effort in. I have watched the videos but it is so much to absorb. This should be any newbie tuners go to crib sheet.

    Reply

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