At a past auto-x I noticed one of the truely fast drivers used camber plates and a camber bolt to make adjusting his camber at an event very easy. Basically he said that he put the plate all the way out and had it aligned using the bolt. At events he slides the plate in all the way, thus gaining a couple degrees of negative camber and being able to return to a street setup after the event. He was doing this on an Imprezza, which unlike my G3, has a McPhearson strut suspension.
Now I have Skunk2 UCAs which allow for fairly easy adjustment of camber in a couple minutes, so I figured I would give it a try. I marked the arms where they were aligned for -1.0 degree of camber so that I could return to the original settings after my little experiment. I slid the arms almost all the way towards the negative extent of their range and took it for a quick drive around the neighborhood. I could very visably see that I had gained significant negative camber, but it also appeared that I had gained some toe-in.
on the test drive, the steering was very very light and reacted heavily to the contour of the road. I figured that the adjustment must have had an adverse affect on the other suspension settings enough that it really messed with the cars steering. However, what I don't get is that toe-in, which I think is what I caused, should result in better stability.
I figure that I created toe-in not only because of what I suspected visually, but also because of the suspension geometry. As the top of the knuckle is angled inwards, the knuckle pivots inward around the lower ball joint. Since the tie-rod connects to the knuckle at a location that is not along the axis of the lower ball joint, this connection point also moves inward, but the connection point is attached to the tie-rod end and cannot move inwards. Therefor the only option is for the knuckle to rotate around the vertical axis as it is pivoted inward at the top.
This picture doesn't show it well, but the lower ball joint is below the axle and the tie-rod end connects to the knuckle almost at the same hight as the center of the hub.
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At the event I talked to a friend who has run significant negative camber in the past and he said that it was actually the large negative camber that made the steering so light and not the affect on the toe. He said that he constantly had to fight the wheel to keep it in-line when he had large negative camber even when the toe was dialed in.
So after all that explanation, the questions are:
Was it the unexpected affect on the toe or was it the camber that affected the steering feel so significantly?
Does changing the camber approximately 3-4 degrees have a significant affect on toe?
Has anyone actually used this method at speed in competition to any degree of success?
Can the camber be adjusted and restored to the previous settings with enough accuracy to not adversly affect our daily driven alignment settings?
Now I have Skunk2 UCAs which allow for fairly easy adjustment of camber in a couple minutes, so I figured I would give it a try. I marked the arms where they were aligned for -1.0 degree of camber so that I could return to the original settings after my little experiment. I slid the arms almost all the way towards the negative extent of their range and took it for a quick drive around the neighborhood. I could very visably see that I had gained significant negative camber, but it also appeared that I had gained some toe-in.
on the test drive, the steering was very very light and reacted heavily to the contour of the road. I figured that the adjustment must have had an adverse affect on the other suspension settings enough that it really messed with the cars steering. However, what I don't get is that toe-in, which I think is what I caused, should result in better stability.
I figure that I created toe-in not only because of what I suspected visually, but also because of the suspension geometry. As the top of the knuckle is angled inwards, the knuckle pivots inward around the lower ball joint. Since the tie-rod connects to the knuckle at a location that is not along the axis of the lower ball joint, this connection point also moves inward, but the connection point is attached to the tie-rod end and cannot move inwards. Therefor the only option is for the knuckle to rotate around the vertical axis as it is pivoted inward at the top.
This picture doesn't show it well, but the lower ball joint is below the axle and the tie-rod end connects to the knuckle almost at the same hight as the center of the hub.
At the event I talked to a friend who has run significant negative camber in the past and he said that it was actually the large negative camber that made the steering so light and not the affect on the toe. He said that he constantly had to fight the wheel to keep it in-line when he had large negative camber even when the toe was dialed in.
So after all that explanation, the questions are:
Was it the unexpected affect on the toe or was it the camber that affected the steering feel so significantly?
Does changing the camber approximately 3-4 degrees have a significant affect on toe?
Has anyone actually used this method at speed in competition to any degree of success?
Can the camber be adjusted and restored to the previous settings with enough accuracy to not adversly affect our daily driven alignment settings?
