where is the balance point on the camber.. potential cornering speed..g?

you see the track S2000's running with huge negative camber front and back..why?

 

Not sure what you mean by balance point. Potential cornering speed is not a good measure of performance.

No matter how steep a car's camber curve is realistically (how much -ve camber gain on suspension compression), it's never enough to compensate +ve camber gain from chassis roll and therefore big -ve cambers maybe needed for all-out cornering performance.

 

when I meant balance point..

where the disadvantage of having negative camber overcomes the benefits..

e.g. what is the camber where tyre performance is maximised (temp/contact patch/slip angle).. and I was wondering if this camber point is going to be speed related..

 

If you want to get down to this detail level, then we'll need to know more details among which the most important ones are spring rates, roll stiffness, what tires and width and wheel width, course layout (because -ve camber trades braking for cornering performance).

 

that's going to be a tricky one..

 

Bassically what Race Miata said. Remember that on the track the tires are often R compound, so they are generating more cornering force, which translates into more body roll. For maximum grip (which is not the only consideration) we want lots of negative camber to keep as much of the the outside tires tread on the road as possible.

The reason you measure tire temperatures across the thread (you measure at the center and both edges of the tread) is to see if one part of the tread is doing more work than the other. Too much tire pressure heats the center of the tire, too little heats the edges, and camber heats one edge more than the other. Temperatures are a guide to help maximize grip, but you also have to consider handling characteristics; Everything is a tradeoff.

On the street, lots of negative camber means that the inside of the tire sdoes most of the work most of the time, so the tire wears much more rapidly. Also, negative camber helps in cornering, but hurts traction during straight line acceleration. Zero camber gives the best traction in a straight line, but will reduce cornering traction (due to roll and the resulting tread lifting).

With the S2000 on OEM tires, on the street, the rear camber seems best between -1.0 and -2.5 degrees. Less gives more oversteer, more gives more tire wear.

If you have to go outside that range to get the handling you want you need to be tuning more than just camber.

 

Exactly! Camber doesn't work in isolation. Driver style/preference is also an important consideration.

Camber seems to get noticed, probably because it's the one part of the alignment that's obvious at a glance. LOL, I wish it really were that simple. If static alignment were all that mattered our lives sure would be a lot easier.

 

thx

actually -2.5 seems to be as far as it would go (according to the alignment shop)..

I am only doing track days with the car.. (including driving to the track) and use advan R when it's dry.. and some toyo road tyres for wet..

 

[QUOTE=Kobe,Apr 6 2006, 01:12 PM] thx

 

Definitely. One example is that with our in-wheel double wishbone suspension that generates steep camber curve, the amount of fore-aft acceleration/deceleration mid-corner determines dynamic weight distribution between front/rear outside tires which in turns mean dynamic suspension compression between front and rear which in turns mean dynamic camber between front and rear. This is the reason why camber stagger becomes more of a magic number on the S2000 (and most other cars). That's also one of the reasons why in-wheel double wishbone suspension with steep camber curve is so superior -- because you can quite easily change dynamic camber on cornering balance just by fine-tuning your throttle input. And that's also the reason why people caught spinning out mid-corner.