Camber - How much?

W

wmwolverines

43
Camber seems like a great thing and unsure if I'm over using it. It seems like the higher I set it the faster I corner with very little/no side effects. I have values of around 3-4 degrees but notice a lot of tuners rarely use more than a couple degrees... Thoughts?
 
In a nutshell, increased negative camber improves cornering grip but decreases straight line grip (braking and accelerating).

You can increase/decrease negative camber to adjust understeer/oversteer tendencies (if you're understeering for example, you can try increasing negative camber in the front to increase grip while cornering).

The goal of increasing negative camber is to maximize tire contact when cornering, but if you use too much negative camber, you'll go beyond the optimum point and start decreasing contact patch. Also, excessive camber will make straight line performance worse (losing traction during braking for example).

Do you use any driving aids?
 
I leave the camber and toe angles at default, too much of a risk, too much could go wrong, sooner or later I will make time to dive into it and learn how to tune camber effectively.
 
I wouldnt worry about it, setting it to 3 doesnt affect straight line performance that much that you will notice it. Over that and cornering will start to be a bit wonky.
 
A car with a stiff suspension or a low ride height shouldn't be using a high camber angle. Reason behind this is because there would be no body roll to rotate the angle of the tires.

Vice versa with a car using soft suspension and a higher ride height. It'll transfer weight a lot better and will be able to run a higher camber angle.

On flat tracks you'll want to run lower angles, but on tracks like the 'Ring you'll run higher due to the banking angles on many of the turns.
 
^^^
What he said. If you like to make your suspension -20 and run super stiff springs then you shouldn't be messing with camber over 0.5. However if you have a heavy car and you just can't make it stick on long sweeping turns try increasing the camber 0.5 at a time and check the speed you can hold the turn at. If you've got the rest of the car tuned well, it should be obvious what camber should be set at.
 
I'm unsure as to when camber is appropriate also. For what reasons would you choose camber to fix over/understeer issues over other susp settings? Other than assumptions based on drivetrain, weight and ride height etc, what exact driving characteristics do you think call for camber adjustments?
 
wmwolverines, "how much camber?" is a million dollar question! And in the absence of concrete proof, some people fervently hold on to their religious beliefs about camber (I'm not referring specifically to anyone in this thread, by the way).

Personally, I'm still sussing out how it works in GT5. You might find my GT4 camber research interesting (as the later post says, the cornering speed results are probably dodgy). Unfortunately some of these tests are not possible in GT5 :grumpy:. Despite popular belief, the best acceleration and braking were not achieved with zero camber, I wonder if it's the same for GT5??

Even more than usual, question everything you read about camber! I suspect there are a lot of camber theories going around that aren't correct, but they've never been tested (for example "increasing camber increases stopping distance"- for sensible camber angles the effect is negligible IMHO)

Hope this helps,
Simon
 
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^

I've read through your results and also the thread and I've saw this point that caught my interest.

Do you think that camber under 2.0 is optimum for gt5?

I have been driving a FD2 Civic type R and I find that increasing the front camber to 3 had reduce understeer a bit and helps keep grip in sweeping turns. I've been trying out camber angles from 2 to 2.5 for a while and was afraid of venturing into the 3 degree zone but from what I am seeing at the moment, it is quite beneficial for a FF.

I will do more testing on this just to make sure it doesn't affect accelerating or braking.
 
@supermelon: I tend to stay under 2.0* but that's just out of superstition at this stage! However, most of the FWD tunes I've seen keep camber under 2.0. I haven't tuned a Civic yet, but on an Integra with wayyyy too much horsepower I'm running front 2.0, rear 0.5. This seems to work fine for both racing hard and racing soft tyres.

*EDIT: but in your case it's a front engined car and you're looking for more high-speed front grip, these are both good reasons to try out higher camber values. If it works, who cares if it's "wrong"!
 
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The most important thing I've seen with camber and all tuning in general, is to make sure it matches your driving style. This is true when racing a real car and on the game. Having tried several setups that were listed on here, I can honestly say that they are good tunes, they just never fit my driving style because I always seem to go faster with my own tunes which are more aggressive typically. I tend to start with around 3.5 front and at least 2.0 rear for how I drive.
 
The reason for me to start experimenting with higher camber angles is because of the amuse s2000 r1. I got this car in the used car dealership and found out that it has 4 degree of camber in front and 4.5 in the rear as default. It also handled really well on the Nurb, so this has lead me to start thinking that higher camber angles should work quite nicely.
 
I usually start with 2.5 front, 2.0 rear on sport tires and 3.0 front, 2.5 rear on racing tires. Adjust up or down slightly from there until I get a feel for better grip and then fine tune to lap times.
 
It's really difficult to adjust your camber to "correct" values in GT5. In real life, as soon as I've come off the track, I will take heat measurements across the width of the tread, divided into thirds. The thirds on the inside or outside will determine how much contact that patch has to the pavement and will tell you whether you need more or less negative camber. In real life, you also have other factors that can change how much camber you need that GT5 does not provide and also can't provide, like suspension bushings getting soft on you with age and use. Worn rubber lower control arm bushings under load will compress, reducing negative camber in the corners, so you would have to adjust your camber to compensate for that too, if you don't replace your bushings with either new rubber ones, or one of another material. Caster also affects camber while the steering wheel is turned. There are many many factors. Camber is quite dynamic.

That being said, depending on the traction of tire I use in GT5, I will add or subtract negative camber, as a grippier tire will benefit much more from more negative camber.
 
I use 2.8 front and 2.6 back with slight variations for all my cars; works for me, but I am not the fastest.

Also not to interested in spending much time tuning; sometimes seek others' tunes
 
I tend to think of car setups as being extremely track-dependent, so you there isn't a single 'correct' camber setting for a given car - it all depends track configuration. It makes sense, for example, to set a higher camber (and softer suspension) for short, twisty tracks like Tsukuba, than you would for an oval, especially if it already has banked turns.
 
camber can be used to compensate for body roll- when the body rolls the negative camber allows the outside tires to sit flat on the concrete, giving the maximum amount of grip. thence, the amount of camber you use correlates inversely to your spring rate and anti-roll bar stiffness. if you have very stiff suspension and strong anti-roll bars then you will need little to no negative camber for optimum cornering. if you have mid-range spring rates and anti roll bars then it is best to use a camber value of 2-4. if you have very soft suspension then you need more camber, a value of 4-6 will do, as you have more body roll. rally cars that drive mostly on dirt and snow do not need any camber because their bodies don't roll, they slide, and the maximum amount of tire area needs to be making contact with driving surface in order to have maximum grip. keep in mind that the more camber you have, the less of the tire makes contact with the ground when you have no body roll and are not cornering, so you will have much less grip in a straight line.

edit: I would like to add that these are my opinions and this is what i have found works for me. i do not intend to force others to use these settings and i do not want to imply that these settings are the only settings that work, everyone has their own method in tuning and i respect that very highly. cheers!
 
I've created an algorithm to find optimal camber... It'll be in the next revision of my GT tuning guide for the iPhone (and others).

Otherwise, the heaviest cars with the softest suspension and stickiest tires can easily utilize up to 5 degrees negative camber, while a Formula race car might only need less than 0.5 degrees negative camber. Most of my non-race cars are around 1.5 degrees negative camber.

Cheers
 
How do you explain post #13 in this thread where it was mentioned that the Amuse s2000 r1 has 4.0/4.5 camber?

I can't explain it because the cars I drive typically start getting slick with camber over 1.5. So I'm really not sure how to approach tuning if such wacky numbers can produce the same results.

We need better in-game cues or data logging to provide insight into what this supposedly masterful gaming engine is doing with our settings. Its not just about oversteer/understeer. It's about maximizing grip and knowing why the car oversteers or understeers.
 
I think when considering optimal camber angles you must talk about toe angles as well. If you want to use less negative camber you can increase the toe and decrease the negative camber.
 
Umm, I don't know about that. Toe and Camber are going to solve completely different issues. IRL rear toe helps cars track straight at high speeds but in the game, it really only affects initial turn in. If you remove the default rear toe the car turns in very aggressively but can often cause immediate oversteer.

Front toe is a separate story. Typically you run postive toe for stability just like the rear which also helps with initial turn in as well as mid corner understeer. However occasionally, such as on oval racing negative toe helps with high speed turning grip by causing the inside tire to track more inward thus increasing its turning angle compared to the outside tire. Since you typically overheat the outside tire first it gives the inside tire something to do. However there aren't any tracks where I see that being a benefit...maybe Indy.
 
I start where I mentioned above, then hit the track. GT5 doesn't have the propper heat for inside, middle and outside as mentioned above, so lap times and feel is what we've got. I don't do this for every car, but for the cars that I plan to drive alot, I will fine tune the camber. Move it up or down a couple of clicks and go back to the track to check the grip. No algorithms needed.
 
camber is set according to the profile of the tire, the higher the profile the more camber, reason is the sidewall of the tire is what flex under cornering so on a F1 they will run a lot of camber because they have high profile tires on little 13 inch wheels. so if you have a 18 inch wheel with a 35mm sidewall the camber should be less, cause there is less flex. it has nothing to do with body roll, that you sort out with anti roll bars and springs.

hope this helps
 
bronzosback
camber is set according to the profile of the tire, the higher the profile the more camber, reason is the sidewall of the tire is what flex under cornering so on a F1 they will run a lot of camber because they have high profile tires on little 13 inch wheels. so if you have a 18 inch wheel with a 35mm sidewall the camber should be less, cause there is less flex. it has nothing to do with body roll, that you sort out with anti roll bars and springs.

hope this helps
Click to expand...

How do we tell what tire size and side wall profile that each tire is in GT5?
 
I tend to limit at -4.5 on the front and -2.5 on the rear, but its very car dependant. those sort of values i'd use in the F1 and FGT cars If i want a hot lap and on specific tracks.

generally i'd stick around -2.5 and up to -1.5 at the rear depending on circumstances.

what I am interested in finding out however is how FWD's are affected by camber.

its not 100% related but i remember often seeing in the British Touring Cars that the FWD's (particularly the Vectra's a few years back) had absurd amounts of REAR camber. looked like a triangle shape the wheels were making if you looked at it from the rear!

and tbh. you dont ever go a BTCC race without someone mentioning too much camber and tyres being ruined.
 
daveyules
I've created an algorithm to find optimal camber... It'll be in the next revision of my GT tuning guide for the iPhone (and others).

Otherwise, the heaviest cars with the softest suspension and stickiest tires can easily utilize up to 5 degrees negative camber, while a Formula race car might only need less than 0.5 degrees negative camber. Most of my non-race cars are around 1.5 degrees negative camber.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Thats what I use^^^^^
 
risewithefallen
camber can be used to compensate for body roll- when the body rolls the negative camber allows the outside tires to sit flat on the concrete, giving the maximum amount of grip. thence, the amount of camber you use correlates inversely to your spring rate and anti-roll bar stiffness. if you have very stiff suspension and strong anti-roll bars then you will need little to no negative camber for optimum cornering. if you have mid-range spring rates and anti roll bars then it is best to use a camber value of 2-4. if you have very soft suspension then you need more camber, a value of 4-6 will do, as you have more body roll. rally cars that drive mostly on dirt and snow do not need any camber because their bodies don't roll, they slide, and the maximum amount of tire area needs to be making contact with driving surface in order to have maximum grip. keep in mind that the more camber you have, the less of the tire makes contact with the ground when you have no body roll and are not cornering, so you will have much less grip in a straight line.

edit: I would like to add that these are my opinions and this is what i have found works for me. i do not intend to force others to use these settings and i do not want to imply that these settings are the only settings that work, everyone has their own method in tuning and i respect that very highly. cheers!
Click to expand...


If body roll and suspesion stiffness were the only factors in camber - why do F1 cars run extreme camber in real life????

Because things such as camber thrust and tire roll/flex all come into account also. It's a combination of it all camber is good.
 

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