Gear Trick

The "gear trick" (also known as the "transmission trick" or "transmission flip") is a tuning technique that resets the car's gear ratios and brings them closer together, without sacrificing top speed. As the RPM drop between gears becomes smaller, it results in improved acceleration, particularly in cars with narrow power bands. The trick was introduced in Gran Turismo 2, and it is possible to perform in every mainline game since then (with the exception of Gran Turismo (PlayStation Portable)).
==Background==
Gran Turismo 2 introduced a new system for tuning a car's transmission: alongside being able to adjust the final drive and each individual gear ratio, the player could also use the "Auto" slider to automatically calculate each ratio.
When the Auto slider is moved to the right, the gap between each gear ratio becomes larger, resulting in the RPM drop when gearing up being wider. This allows the car to reach higher top speeds, but it also negatively impacts acceleration, as gear shifts take longer to perform and the car is more likely to be outside of the engine's peak RPM range, or "power band". On top of this, 1st gear's length is barely impacted, leading to heavy wheelspin when launching and exiting corners.
When the Auto slider is moved to the left, the RPM drop between gears becomes smaller. This setup is known as "close gears". As the car spends more time in the power band, acceleration is generally improved, but because the gearbox is shorter overall, top speed is reduced. However, this can be circumvented by adjusting the final drive ratio after using the Auto slider. By lengthening the gearbox by moving the final drive slider to the left, the car can have both close gears and high top speed. While the sacrifice of doing this is that 1st gear becomes much longer, this actually benefits most cars (especially FR's). Wheelspin is greatly reduced when launching, and the car can apply its power to the road more easily while exiting corners.
The Auto slider uses the current final drive ratio to calculate each individual gear ratio. This detail is what allows the "gear trick" to be performed. If you set the final drive as short as possible (ie. move the slider all the way right), then move the Auto slider all the way left, you now have the maximum possible range of adjustment. You can then move the final slider to the left as much as you want until the car has enough top speed and/or 1st gear launches the car smoothly.
To tune a car's gears optimally, the gear trick is only the first step. Not only does the Auto slider calculate the ratios for each individual gear, it also calculates the range of adjustment for each gear. You can make the RPM drop between gears even smaller than the default setup if you move 1st and/or 2nd gear's sliders all the way left, 4th gear's slider about 75% towards the right, and 5th and/or 6th's sliders all the way right. This reduces the gap in ratios between 1st and 6th gear, along with the gears in between.
The gear trick is possible in following mainline GT games, with slight variations. In Gran Turismo 3, the Auto slider has a tendency to calculate bugged ratios, and to avoid this, you need to move the slider all the way right first, before moving it all the way left. The bug was fixed in Gran Turismo 4, and the trick can be performed the same way as in GT2. The mainline games from Gran Turismo 5 onwards renamed the Auto slider to "Top Speed" or "Max Speed", but the trick still works exactly as before.
==Procedure==
To perform the trick, apply the following changes, in this exact order:
*Move the Final slider all the way right.
*Move the "Auto" / "Max Speed" / "Top Speed" slider all the way right, then all the way left.
*Adjust the Final slider until the car launches smoothly and has enough top speed.
*Adjust the individual gear ratios to bring the gear ratios closer together, by arranging them in a pattern where the lower gear sliders are towards the left and the higher gear sliders are towards the right.
Do not touch the Auto / Max Speed / Top Speed slider again after this, as doing so will reset the ratios and you'll need to re-do the trick from the beginning.
Category:Modifications