Fix GTA V Vehicle Issues 2024

Mod creators often don't test their mods or just don't care about potential problems. This quick guide will help you fix common issues with GTA V vehicles. For example, vehicles not spawning, incomplete spawns, bad handling, lights not working or no engine sound.

Vehicle isn't Spawning

Vehicle addons go into your dlcpacks folder which by default can be found at:

\Mods\update\x64\dlcpacks

Step 1: Installing vehicle addon in proper location.

The vehicle addon mod, the part you'll install, consists of a single folder containing a single file called dlc.rpf. If the folder contains other files or a folder called Stream, then it is for FiveM, not Single Player, or just the wrong folder. You can install addons directly in OpenIV or using Windows Explorer.

Step 2: Adding the entry to dlclist.xml

Once your vehicle has been placed in dlcpacks, you'll also need to let OpenIV know to load it in game. This is done using dlclist.xml. The entry for your vehicle addon in dlclist.xml will be exactly the same as the folder name. For example, if you car folder name is "Cobra" your entry will look like this:

 <Item>dlcPacks:/Cobra/</Item>

Step 2: Spawning the Vehicle

Generally the spawn name for your vehicle will be identical to the folder name. Unfortunately that isn't always the case because some mod creators just don't like to follow standards. You can identify and verify the correct spawn name by navigating in OpenIV to a file called vehicles.rpf. For example:

cobra\dlc.rpf\x64\vehicles.rpf\

Inside vehicle.rpf, you'll see yft files (the 3D models) and ytd files (textures). The correct spawn name will be the file name. For example you might have cobra.yft and cobra.ytd. Leave out the file extension and your spawn name is then cobra. Disregard the file cobra_hi.yft, you don't want the _hi part.

For a complete installation guide, view: How to Install Vehicle Addon

Vehicle Disappears After Spawn

This is a common and normal phenomenon, intentionally designed to manage game memory. To keep the vehicle in game, what is called persistence, you can use a Trainer that supports persistence.

For a more information on this issue, view: GTA 5 Cars Despawning

 

SEE ALSO:  Car Addon Mod Doesn't Spawn

Vehicle Not Spawning Completely or Properly

If your vehicle spawns looking like the picture at the top, with parts missing and just a total mess overall it's because the car has tuning parts. This can be easily fixed with a trainer. For example in the Menyoo trainer you'll go into the Vehicle Options, Menyoo Custom and play with the options. In our picture above, switching from "Stock Fenders" for "Arch Extensions" will fix the problem

Vehicle Doesn't Have An Engine Sound

This happens when the mod creator doesn't understand how GTA V files works and how they are interrelated. In these cases the car is missing a reference to the audio file or the reference is to a file or mod that doesn't exist. You can fix this issue with a trainer. For example in Menyoo, Vehicle Options, Menyoo Customs, you would select the "Engine Audio" option to fix the missing sound. More advanced users can go into OpenIV and edit the file called vehicles meta. In our Cobra example you can find this file at:  \Mods\update\x64\dlcpacks\cobra\dlc.rpf\common\data.

Inside the vehicles.meta file, you will need to look for this xml tag:

 <audioNameHash>mamba</audioNameHash>

Substitute "mamba" for the name of a vanilla car (or audio file) that will give you the desired sound. If the file is missing, just add it in yourself.

 

Vehicle Doesn't Handle Well

This happens because the mod creator just used another mod's handling file and never bothered to test his own car. There are two ways to fix this issue. The first is to see if a handling mod is available for download and installation. The second method, for advanced users, is to edit this file yourself. For this latter case you can always use the handling data from a similar model (or the entire file) as your template. The handling file, handling.meta, is at the same location as vehicles.meta and is also plain text which can be edited directly in OpenIV or a text editor.

Vehicle Lights Don't Turn On
Once more this results from mod creators who don't know much about mods other than the 3D model conversions. Thankfully this is an easy fix in the file called carvariations.meta, which is also found at the same location as the vehicles.meta and handling.meta described above. Simply look for this tag and set its value to 0 as a starting point - there are of course other settings that can be selected.

<lightSettings value="0" /> 

Vehicle lighting is a somewhat complex topic and beyond the scope of this guide. For example, depending on the model, vanilla and addons, there might be additional light information at the bottom of the file carcols.meta which is located with the other vehicle data files.  Not all vehicle addons will have this file. Note: there are also  game data files that contain all vanilla cars: carcols.ymt file and carvariations.ymt if you need to change the values for vanilla cars. These can be found at:

mods\update\update.rpf\x64\data