ride height & camber

[jackal]

fag packet calcs..


if you drop a car by say 1cm how much more -ve camber would it put on the car ?

any ideas

[Defcon5]

Not enough to be noticable surely?

[jackal]

well you say that but i just read on another forum that a chap put lowering springs on his MX5 and the camber increaed by a degree on the front and well over a degree at the rear

could be complete BS of course

[Sam_68]

It depends on the virtual swing axle length: somewhere between none at all (parallel wishbones, infinite swing axle length) and a measurable amount (very short swing axle length).

But a 10mm drop in ride height is not going to result in a huge amount of camber change on a well-designed suspension, otherwise the camber variation under normal bump/droop movement would be unacceptable.

[LaurenceFrost]

I think the toe changes are likely to be more affected on your typical car than camber changes intoroduced by lowering a bit, and these changes are also a lot easier to feel as toe has a very direct relationship with the steering.

If you do drop the car slightly, reset your toe settings as well.

[Mr2Mike]

LaurenceFrost said:

I think the toe changes are likely to be more affected on your typical car than camber changes intoroduced by lowering a bit,

If a 1cm deflection resulted in significant toe changes then the resulting bump steer would make the car terrible to drive.

[jackal]

Mr2Mike said:

LaurenceFrost said:

I think the toe changes are likely to be more affected on your typical car than camber changes intoroduced by lowering a bit,

If a 1cm deflection resulted in significant toe changes then the resulting bump steer would make the car terrible to drive.

yep, i should be running different uprights and tie rods

might go for them at some point soon


if there is excessive bumpsteer (because the rack/rods are now too low) do you think that would make a difference to how the car reacts to bumps in a straight line ? or is it more about when the car is cornering and hits a bump ?

[Sam_68]

jackal said:

if there is excessive bumpsteer (because the rack/rods are now too low) do you think that would make a difference to how the car reacts to bumps in a straight line ? or is it more about when the car is cornering and hits a bump ?

If you've got excessive bump steer, you'll definitely notice it in a straight line - the car will feel directionally unstable and want to tramline as it runs over ruts, bumps and cambers.

It's often much less noticeable when cornering, ironically, because when you've got some lock on the steering the all the bushes, joints and bearings are definitely loaded in one direction.

In a straight line - at its worst - bump steer can potentially be taking your front wheel from a state of toe-in to one of toe-out, thereby changing the whole direction of the (admittedly small) lateral loads on all those components that have a bit of play in them.