What is considered a good camber gain for a performance street suspension?

I don´t think there can be a single"best" value. It depends on so many values, like tires (profile, width), height of the car (rotating center etc.) and pretty many other things.

I´ve done a drop of 1 7/8" for my A-arms. I have 351w, 620lbs springs, 225-50/15 tires. By these changes I´ve gotten just a little oversteering Classic stang (weights 720 kg front 600 kg back), which, I think performs pretty well on the road. Haven´t gotten a change to go to track yet (cause I blew up my 8")

Feel free to comment

English isn´t my strongest area, so this may sound funny to you...

What year car are you talking about?

Like Mosse stated (very well stated): it depends on all the different suspension pieces, tires, etc.

We need more info.

wildstang,
Good luck on your project.

I don't want camber gain through the suspension travel on my '65. That would mean when I hit a bump it would change the camber (and steer the car a bit). I try to keep the camber the same throughout the suspension travel (it's easier for me to drive). It's also called bump steer.

I like about a steady 3 degrees of negative for road racing (depending on the track). I prefer about -1 degree for a street car (it keeps me from wearing out tires and still handles great). I got that from relocating the upper (the Shelby way, as you did). It is not easy, as you know, since you have to shim it, lower, measure, them re-shim (but it works). Be sure and recheck the toe (some like a little toe-out to turn in the corner, some (me) likes a 1/16 of toe-in so it will not "wander" at high speeds.

Sorry, I do not know of the MII. Is that a coilover system?

Do you have sub-frame connectors? Rollbar? Rollbar connected to suspension pick-ups?

I like the front stiff and the rear springs on the soft side (personal preference)

Begin with 1 1/2 degrees negative. Check out the front wheels.

HistoricMustang
www.historicmustang.com

Begin with 1 1/2 degrees negative. Check out the front wheels.

Click to expand...

he was asking about the camber curve not the static camber settings

Whoa! Can we bring the picture size down just a bit. This sideways (huh, huh I got to say sideways) This sideways scrolling to read a thread thing sucks.

I've heard figures of about 1 deg per inch of bump is a good number. My memory is kinda fuzzy but I seem to remember a 1" lowered UCA mount and 2" lowered ride height put us in the neighborhood of about 1.2 deg per inch. Moving the UCA mount down another 1/2" only gave an increase of about .1 deg per inch.

If you can keep vehicle movement to a minimum, you will not need as much camber to compensate for body roll.

bnickel said:

he was asking about the camber curve not the static camber settings

Click to expand...

bnickel,
and your answer is?

HistoricMustang
www.historicmustang.com

Can you say, pissing contest!

wildstang said:

Thanks you guys, I appreciate the help. When the car is sitting, should the static camber be close to 0 degrees and does the camber rate of say 1 degree for 1 inch of movement for the full suspension travel (fully extended to complete compression)? Thanks again.

Click to expand...

If you want to get really specific in a general kind of way. Well here's the camber gain spiel.

I would say for a "street performance" car, lower the upper arm mounting point 1", set the static camber to about 1/2 degree negative with a decent set of wheels and tires and you will be fine. You should also upgrade to a larger stabilizer (anti-sway) bar. This will put you way ahead of where you are now and you will never really drive the car hard enough on the street to realize the difference between a 1.0 and a 1.2 degree per inch camber gain.

Now, if you have a car that has very tall tires and excessive body roll you need a steeper curve to compensate for the loss of tire contact with the road. So lets say you start with -1* and you get and additional -1* in two inches of compression. While this is happening, your body rolls 3.5* as you go around a corner. What we are left with before you take tire deflection into account is +1.5* camber overall. Not good. Now you can go about fixing this in a few different ways.

1) Lower the upper arm mounting point to put the ball joint at the begining of its inward swing.

2) Lower the ride height to put the ball joint further into its inward swing, giving a quicker camber curve. Lowering the ride height also lowers the center of gravity, reducing the moment or amount of leverage that the center of gravity has in relation to the roll center.

3) Raise the roll center to reduce the roll rate of the vehicle. This also brings the center of gravity and roll center closer together.

Note: The "Shelby Drop" does all three of these to some degree.

4) Install a larger stabilizer bar to lessen the body roll. If we only have 1.5* of body roll when starting with -1* and gaining another -1* we still have -.5*. Now we're getting somewhere.

Finally, 5) Reduce the amount of tire deflection with larger wheels and lower profile tires and you've got yourself a decent handling vehicle. Well its better than it was at least.

Psydwaze said:

If you want to get really specific in a general kind of way.

Click to expand...

This my friends is the line of the day...lol

1995cobraR said:

wildstang,
Good luck on your project.

I don't want camber gain through the suspension travel on my '65. That would mean when I hit a bump it would change the camber (and steer the car a bit). I try to keep the camber the same throughout the suspension travel (it's easier for me to drive). It's also called bump steer.

I like about a steady 3 degrees of negative for road racing (depending on the track). I prefer about -1 degree for a street car (it keeps me from wearing out tires and still handles great). I got that from relocating the upper (the Shelby way, as you did). It is not easy, as you know, since you have to shim it, lower, measure, them re-shim (but it works). Be sure and recheck the toe (some like a little toe-out to turn in the corner, some (me) likes a 1/16 of toe-in so it will not "wander" at high speeds.

Sorry, I do not know of the MII. Is that a coilover system?

Do you have sub-frame connectors? Rollbar? Rollbar connected to suspension pick-ups?

I like the front stiff and the rear springs on the soft side (personal preference)

Click to expand...

Camber gain is not the same as bump steer. Camber is the angle of the tire from vertical as viewed from the front of the car. Camber gain is the change in camber as the suspension moves.

Bumpsteer is caused by the tie rod not following the same path as the lower control arm.

The posts above have really covered this topic well, but one other thing about roll stiffness of a car...

Stiffer springs add to the roll stiffness. However, like every other mod, there are tradeoffs. Too stiff of springs will reduce your cornering ability, especially on rough roads. Remember that your tires won't help you when they aren't touching the pavement.

Really stiff springs can also make for an uncomfortable ride.