The Tune Rules

The following rules ALWAYS apply to the Tuning process - you should memorize these as they will help you to stay out of trouble, and prevent you from wasting time!

1. Tune for the track.

Forza has progressed to the point where the state of the community and its Tuning skills overall have far surpassed the point where tuning is a general effort. Nobody is tuning the car for its strengths anymore, they are tuning the car for the track almost exclusively.

Because of this YOU need to do so as well. At least if you want a competitive edge that is. And yes, that means creating a tune for the car you are racing for the track you are racing it on.

If it sounds like that means 26 sets of tunes PER CAR, not including variations, don't panic. It is not that bad. That approach sounds a lot worse than it really is.

Besides that, it would not be practical anyway because in reality it will not be 26 or more tunes per car - more like 8 to 10 - since you are not going to want to use one car for all tracks, as they are not a generic fit.

So before you make the decision to start the rather lengthy process of learning how to tune - or before you improve the Tuning skills you already possess, you need to start that process with a very tight and targeted evaluation of the cars themselves in their stock configuration. We cover that next.

2. Change One Thing at a Go

The thing you need to remember is that not every change will be one to keep - and the only way to KNOW what the change did is to keep it isolated. So the Golden Rule is to make changes to only one thing at a time. When you change too many things you increase the chances that you will end up not being able to tell what change you made had what effect.

3. Change Small, Break Small

When you make changes that are too large it can have unexpected effects that can mislead you and cause you to perceive the changes as being different than they really are.

4. Test Your Changes.

When you make a change you should test that to see what the effect of the change is on the track you are Tuning for. That is the key to learning how to tune - making changes and then learning what they did to the car.

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of teh Way? Lead for 100 Miles!

5. Always ONLY Fix What is Broken.

This should be obvious - but it is not. If you take your car into tune it because, for example, the rear end keeps breaking loose in severe turns and you want to fix that, then the rear end is what you should be focused on - not the front end! Always focus on the problem, because trying to change too much almost always makes the original problem harder to isolate and fix.

6. Tune in the Proper Order

The order you should focus on is to improve handling and THEN power, not the other way around.

Getting the car stable and performing the way you want it to is absolutely necessary to success in adjusting its power characteristics because as you adjust those they will change the performance characteristics, and you are far better off having those notched in so that any adjustments you have to make after adjusting power are minor.