hey guys, I have a '94 lude VTEC with some Apex'i springs, Tokico struts, all the strut bars/braces, and soon a rear sway bar.

my question is: right now I have about 1.7 degrees of toe in the front, and about 1.5-1.6 in the rear. For a daily driven car, that gets a healthy amount of caynon-running on the weekends and the occassional auto-X, how much camber is optimal in the front and rear? I make the occasional trip to the drag strip and local street meets, and would also like to be able to put some good rubber down off the line but I'd prefer my car to handle well rather then launch well. any advice?

 

It is a bit too much, but you should be okay. Look at your cars manual for the correct camber and allignment specs. I had betwen 2 and 2.5 degrees camber and adjusted it to 1-1.5 degs. I like tha handling better now and the tires don´t wear as fast. For AutoX a more negative camber is better, but too much is not good.

 

The car's manual won't have any idea what to do with lowered suspension. If you have a camber kit on the car, I'd dial it back to -2 degrees or -1.8 degrees in the front, and around 1/16" toe out total in the front. More than that, and you will start chewing tires. My autox Integra had -2.25 degrees camber in the front and 1/8" toe out, but it tended to shave rubber off the tires a fair bit.

 

I had -1.6 deg front and rear on my integra for a long time. Daily driver, autocrossed a couple times a month, with some spirited street driving. Handled great and didn't have serious tire wear problems.

-Mike

 

Keep in mind that as you increase camber, you will decrease your straight line performance all around. This does matter for autocross/road racing, because too much camber will hurt your braking performance. When that happens, you had better hope that the additional camber will carry you through that turn at your new found higher entry speed, LOL!

 

Yeah!!! cool te be the one with the quote of the month! hehe

 

Please enlighten me. I don't see any reason why camber would slow you down once you're rolling. On a standing start, I absolutely agree that you're gonna be slower because your contact patch is smaller and you'll have traction issues launching, but racing on a road course, you'll have to explain how the extra camber will slow me down.

 

I didn't say that it would slow you down, I said it would decrease performance (I was being general on purpose). In fact, increased camber can do the opposite of slow you down, as in my decreased braking ability example in my post above. Increasing the camber, while traveling in a straight line, decreases the contact patch of the tire. This will decrease your ability to accelerate out of corners, launch from a stop, and brake before turn-in. In a way, this slows you down with respect to lap times, but I agree that, once you're rolling, there's nothing inherent in camber that will slow the car down. I guess you may even get some benefit from a decrease in rolling resistence, but who wants that at the cost of accelerating and braking efficiency?

 

LOL! Yes, it's a very prestigious honor

 

also remember under braking dive camber gets even worse!

Both feet in and straight off!!!!!
On a slow autox course!!!!!



[Modified by Mista Bone, 9:12 AM 1/18/2002]