Camber & Toe

[Yeobh]

Toe out setting will counteract the Camber negative setting. If there is zero toe setting the each wheel will pull inward . The stronger wheel ( pulling force) cause the car to move side way.

[BMW320i]

just installed coilovers on fri & have been waiting for suspension to sit in. currently ride is positive camber & toe out for both front wheels. would like to seek opinions on CAMBER & TOE which i'll be doing soon once e camber screw is in.

 

CAMBER

was told for normal driving camber should set to -0.5 degree while for cornering purposes should set to -1 degree & finally track purposes -1.5 degree. is this correct?

 

TOE

is the normal toe ZERO? understand some stock cars are meant to be toe in. wat's e benefit for a car being toe in?

 

will these 2 issues be resolved by computer alightment wkshops coz i don't have much of a choice. there's only 2 known with the correct software for my ride

 

WRONG.

 

Everycar has its own unique alignment settings. Camber and toe are both subjected to individual driving style and car set up. There are no textbook figures.

 

Instead of asking the amount of camber and toe, you should be asking yourself what you want out of your car.

[Qr25vet]

hear hear!!!

[Msimax]

ok. had re-adjust to camber -1.24 n toe out 1 degree for coming 2wks. i find my steering not as sharp as stock. pls advise wat adjustment should i do to achieve this sharpness. thinking of going to people's auto this time round. thanks!

[BMW320i]

I have never sort the use of toe settings because I find them relatively redundant.

 

On the racetrack I am running a camber of F-4 and R-3.5 at the rear. I have tried Toe out adjustments to the front to reduce understeer as I am on AWD layout.

 

What you will realise with front toe out alignment is that you are compensating the shortfall of understeer at the expense of stablity. I am assuming you are running front toe out.

 

Under heavy braking dynamic camber and toe alignment becomes an issue due to all the weight transfer to the front causing the tyres side walls to flex further. Hence your dynamic toe is increased more than what you initially asked for.

 

Even on a stable platform such as AWD, charging downhill at a gradient of -20 to -25 under heavy braking from 230kph, the front starts to wonder left and right and the rear is destablised even further due to front weight bias.

 

Slow speed corners are perhaps great (eg. autokhana), in high speed, the trade off is more detrimental than beneficial.

 

With the addition negative camber and toe out, wear and tear on inner side becomes even more prominent. Unless you are prepared to change tyres every 15,000km like me. I don't advice you to run toe out.

 

Like I said. There are no textbook figures. Most of our camber settings are conducted through a series of heat temps extrapolation registered on a table to determine an alignment that will spread heat evenly all 3 parts of tyre surface. This is done to race cars utilising heat sensitive tyres where traction values trail off drastically once operating temps have been surpassed.

 

For street cars, a balance of F-1.5 to -2 is usually a conservative setting and lenient on tyre wear.

 

Again, there are no textbook figures. It all boils down to what you want to do with the car as well as factor in tyre dimensions, tyre side walls rigidity, suspension type, drive train layout, driver's preference, driving style etc.

Edited October 31, 2008 by BMW320i