Increased camber reduces tyre contact with the road.
Not when done properly. It's supposed to be matched to spring rate and body roll to ensure the tyres are flat on the road surface during cornering
The higher the camber, the more the car will slide.
Only once you've passed thepoint at which the tyre sits flat
Too much front camber and the car will greatly understeer.
Yes, but too little and it will understeer aswell.
The front and rear camber must be balanced (not equal) to stop the back end trying to overtake the front, or vise versa.
They don't need to be balanced to each other, they need to be balanced to the suspension stiffness and thus body-roll
*Paitiently waits for TwinTurboCH's response to clear everything up*
LOL Am I THAT obvious
*Patiently hopes that TwinTurboCH will get back to him on FC spring rates*
This afternoon I will be tuning and setting up a Z32 and an FC for you and someone else who asked me. I'll give you a shout when it's done
I have a way of using camber if you have 5 camber in front then i like 3.0 in back i divide the front and add .5 so (5)-(2.5)+5=3.0 which will be your rear.
Balancing your camber to each other is pointless, it's supposed to be balanced to spring rate/ARB settings (i.e. bodyroll)
holy crap this is wrong.
i'm sure the turbo dude will chime in, and i'm pretty lazy, let's see how far i get before i get lazy:
-more front (negative) camber, more contact patch when turned
-camber in general, changes with the squat of the car/weight distribution/blah blah blah, camber is not constant
okay nevermind. take it away, turbo pro drift guy!
LOL wish I could get away with the 'lazy' thing. I've just spent half an hour typing the below post haha
To the OP, it'll take a LONG time to describe in total detail, but basically it's as follows:
Since this is in the drifting forum, I will only talk about the ways these setting affect drift cars. I could do race cars aswell, but I really can't be bothered to type a ten page essay LOL
TOE: On a full-on drift car, toe-in/toe-out is USUALLY only applied to the rear. This is mainly because we modify the front hubs to reduce 'ackerman', but that's a whole different post in itself discussing amount of steering lock and stability at HUGE angles.
Toe-in, the front of the wheels on the affected axle (rear) are closer together than the rear's of the same wheels (like a duck's feet). On the rear, this causes the car to increase traction (therefore less oversteer, more understeer), meaning more grip when accelerating. It also increases rolling resistance. Use a little toe-in on cars with too much oversteer.
Toe-out, this is the opposite of above, the front's of the wheels on the affected axle are further apart than the rears (opposite of a duck's feet LOL). On the rear this will cause the back end to step out more readily when turning in. The downside is that straight line stability is affected, because if one wheel loses grip (lock-up under braking fro instance), the other wheel will try to pull the back end out of line. Use toe-out for cars which have too much understeer.
CAMBER This is done because, during cornering, the body of the car will roll, causing the pitch of the wheels to change and the tyres not be flat on the tarmac. Easiest way to explain it is, think what happens when you corner hard in a normal road car, it feels like the front tyres are folding under the car, this is because the body is rolling lots, but the tyres are vertical to the body, so they are now as far away from vertical as the body of the car is away from being flat (a few degrees) so the tyres are not flat on the road, reducing contact patch size, and therefore grip. The complex part arises when you realise that, on most cars, camber changes with ride height. If you lower most standard road cars, you will end up with camber that wasn't there before. So you need to take this into account when setting up. A car with more suspension travel will have more camber variation than one with a very stiff setup.
Negative Camber This is where the top of the wheel leans inwards towards the body of the car. Set it perfect on the rear and the tyres will sit flat on the road during cornering, but if you have too much, the car will have reduced contact patch in a straight line and so you will lose straight line grip and also grip on iinital turn-in (before the body gets a chance to roll) causing excess oversteer on corner entry.
Where it gets complex is on the front, because camber changes as you apply steering lock. Again, look on your road car. Put the car on full lock and get out and look at the front wheels. The outside wheel (front right if you have turned the wheel to the left or vice versa) will be close to vertical (not exactly) because, when cornering normally, this is the wheel you want to have the most grip. However, the inside wheel will most likely now be canted over at a severe camber angle, on the road/track this doesn't matter much, beacause this wheel is unwieghted during cornering anyway. In drifting however, when sideways, this 'canted over' wheel is now the outside wheel (because you are on opposite lock) and as such, is the wheel that does all your steering, and so needs the most grip, so to have it lacking grip is a bad thing. What we tend to do is add some negative camber while the wheels are straight so that, when the wheels are on full lock, the outside wheel sits flat on the tarmac and so provides the most grip and most direct steering.
Positive Camber This is when the tops of the wheels lean out away from the body of the car. This is basically never used in drifting unless you are suffering lack of traction in a car with very soft rear susension but very stiff anti-roll bars. I've only ever seen it used once on a drift car in real life and that was on a relatively softly sprung PS13, and even then it was only 0.4 degrees. It was done so that, when the driver went hard on throttle, the rear end squatted, altering camber and causing the rear tyres to sit totally vertical, giving maximum grip.
I don't know if any of the above makes sence, it's kind of hard without pictures or being able to demonstrate.
If you are still struggling to understand, I'll get my petrol RC touring cars out and make a little video showing the effects and reasoning
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