More camber in the back than the front, bad?
 

Hi all, so I brought my car to firestone for an alignment today and it has -2.25 degree front camber and -3 degree rear camber after adjusted. How will it affect the tire wear and handling, compare to maybe -2 degree square? Correct me if I'm wrong, what I think is that more negative camber in the back will give more grip in the rear wheels, so why is it an undesirable thing for our car? Thanks.

More front camber means less under steer.

-3 is a lot for the rear. Is your car modified?

- Andrew

^Yea it make sense that more front camber = more grip in the front which results less under-steer. But will more camber in the rear tires makes our cars under-steer more? Sorry I'm so new to suspension setting.

^Andrew yea it is lowered with kw v3 with front camber plates. Would you suggest me to add LCA to reduce the rear camber?

Without your exact setup nobody will really be able to tell you how it will or won't handle but a couple things.

The reason most people run more camber in the front is because the front is a strut configuration that gains very little camber through its stroke where as the rear being a multi link setup gains considerably more camber through its stroke.

Also if you have 3 deg after lowering with no LCA you might be lower than optimal anyway.

The front and rear are different functionally, MacPherson strut in the front and multi link in the back. So you can't really say what's good for one is good for the other by correlation.

That said, you probably want over -3 up front and between -2 and -3 in the back if you have grippy tires and are really pushing the car. There's a point after which you lose cornering traction and forward grip with camber in the back, but finding the sweet spot needs data. It likely depends on the tires, tire pressures, and spring rates.

I think -3 is too much though.

Yes, and/or raise the car up some.

As for exact settings, it will depend on other factors like tire choice, spring rates, how you use the car, etc.

- Andrew

I've never understood why I see so many cars on the road with a lot of rear camber and very little in the front. I always assumed it was a drifting thing because in the rear you're going to have less grip from that set up. It's not as simple as "more camber means more grip". There's a reason every RWD race car has more camber up front. Too much camber leaves you with less rip, not more.

When you enter a corner, deflection of the suspension (from weight being shifted to the loaded wheel) causes dynamic camber changes and the tire will gain positive (or become less negative) camber. When you exit a corner, weight shifts to the rear of the car and you get deflection of the rear wheels.

This is good if you load up a wheel in a corner and you go from lots of negative camber to no or positive camber and the deflection of the wheel makes the tire flatten out relative to the road and you maximize your contact patch. There's more weight change to the front of the vehicle in a corner (braking & turning) than the rear, so generally a car wants more front camber than rear since there's more deflection of the front wheels.

Some rear camber helps on acceleration since the shift of weight to the rear of the car under acceleration causes deflection of the rear wheels. But not near as much as in the front going into a corner. So why all the rear camber on some cars? I suspect it's just people who don't know what they are doing or think it looks cool.

I think if we don't pass the optimal point, more camber should help providing more grip in corner due to weight shifting? I'm not a fan of crazy camber neither, just want to find the proper setting for my "kind of aggressive" canyon drive.

Will try to raise the car up a bit later, which I should've done it early. Right now the car is sitting too low and very uncomfortable for daily driving...

You're past it. It's still a balancing game. For canyoning I'd lower the car 25-30mm over stock and run -2.8f/-2.3r if you're on something like a PSS, just a touch of toe in for the back. If you want to know if it's optimal, you need a pyrometer and tire temps...

I'm installing front cambolts and rear SPC camber arms soon then I'm getting an alignment. I don't want crazy tire wear and since it's a DD, I'm changing the suspension geometry more for personal feel and taste but I do autocross every now and again. Based on potential tire wear and playing with settings in Project Cars, I'm going with a little toe-in up front (about .1°), and rear (.2° because I don't want the car to wander lanes on the highway either), -1.75 (cambolts maxed out so whatever that is) camber front and -1.5 rear. That should liven up the handling a little bit more. A little camber goes a long way as far as the feel of your car goes.

I have my BRZ on ST coilovers, running -2.5 camber all around with a slight amount of toe in the the rear. It feels like around a corner, the rear doesn't have as much grip as it did stock. I'm looking to get some rear LCA to dial some of the camber in the rear back closer to stock, would that give me more grip?