Why 0° Camber?

[Lelandjt]

Why do cars like the Twins come with 0° front camber and no built in adjustment? Does runnning 1° or so increase tire wear that dramatically? Even if that's true, they were clearly willing to sacrifce running costs (MPG) for sportiness, so why not tire life? This is the case with many sporty cars, but then there are several other non-exotic sports cars that do have adjustment and negative camber with the stock specs. Adding some adjustment doesn't seem like it would add real expense to production and giving up a tiny bit of tire life seems like a trade off any buyer of a 2 door car would accept. Why are the manufacturers so far away from what the buyers want on this item?

[RToyo86]

Production costs are mainly to blame for lack of front camber combined with McPherson strut design. A simple camber/crash bolt can add around 1° or just over 2° if you run both.

-1 to -2° up front doesn't change tire wear much from my experience, toe on the other hand has much greater effect. I've roasted inner shoulders running toe out up front.

[Sapphireho]

People, and even performance shops used to look at me crazy when I told them I wanted/ran 1° negative camber. 1981.

I guess I was ahead of my time.

Edit: I'm tAlking a car I autocrossed. Streetcar should be 0.

[Asobu]

Why do you want camber by default?

[vindiesel]

Brz understeers from factory when pushed hard into corners. People that drive on the streets that don’t want to go to prison or into a guardrail you won’t notice it too much. People that track will notice the difference. The crash bolts neutralize any under steer which nets a “quicker” turn in.

If you drive on the street only or never driven on track I wouldn’t bother with it factory is good enough..

[TommyW]

Factory goes for understeer which is the safer option for inexperienced drivers on the street.

[Lelandjt]

Originally Posted by TommyW

Factory goes for understeer which is the safer option for inexperienced drivers on the street.

I guess that's the most reasonable answer.
Cost for a slot or eccentric bolts seems like a non-issue.
Every car I've driven with 0°, then 1° felt better. Less scrub and more precision in the first half of a turn. I don't think I saw significant tire wear from such little camber and some sports car do have that much in their "street" spec.

[Lelandjt]

Originally Posted by Sapphireho

Edit: I'm tAlking a car I autocrossed. Streetcar should be 0.

Your personal street car, or one sold to the public as an entry to mid level sports car or sedan?

[Sapphireho]

Originally Posted by Lelandjt

Your personal street car, or one sold to the public as an entry to mid level sports car or sedan?

Yes

[mr.whiskers]

Originally Posted by Lelandjt

Why do cars like the Twins come with 0° front camber and no built in adjustment? Does runnning 1° or so increase tire wear that dramatically? Even if that's true, they were clearly willing to sacrifce running costs (MPG) for sportiness, so why not tire life? This is the case with many sporty cars, but then there are several other non-exotic sports cars that do have adjustment and negative camber with the stock specs. Adding some adjustment doesn't seem like it would add real expense to production and giving up a tiny bit of tire life seems like a trade off any buyer of a 2 door car would accept. Why are the manufacturers so far away from what the buyers want on this item?

Probably the same reason why the sound system is crap, the exhaust system is super quiet and instead you get fake noises from the speaker, why the plastics in the interior are so easy to scratch.

The car is being built to a certain price point and at some point in time engineers decided to go with the cheaper MacPherson up front instead of double wishbone. And this decision was probably made like 13 years ago or whenever they were designing the first gen.

I think to perfect the second gen they could have put the Toyota 1.6T in there detuned to 200hp instead of the boxer and front double wishbone but I am not sure how much that would affect the cost and if its realistic at all, but one can dream.

[mr.whiskers]

Originally Posted by Sapphireho

People, and even performance shops used to look at me crazy when I told them I wanted/ran 1° negative camber. 1981.

I guess I was ahead of my time.

Edit: I'm tAlking a car I autocrossed. Streetcar should be 0.

Last summer I took my car to an alignment place to get the smaller oem bolts installed and told them to give it as much negative camber as they could. When I came back to pick up the car the guy said people in the shop were wondering why I wanted this done

[OkieSnuffBox]

Originally Posted by Sapphireho

People, and even performance shops used to look at me crazy when I told them I wanted/ran 1° negative camber. 1981.

I guess I was ahead of my time.

Edit: I'm tAlking a car I autocrossed. Streetcar should be 0.

No camber on a street car with McPherson struts up front? Why would you do that? McPherson struts gain nearly no camber under compression and toe has a lot more impact on wear than camber. Even a dual A Arm setup that will gain camber under compression, run static camber.

I run -2.5 and zero toe on my street car. Massive grip and sensational turn in. And -2 in the rear with a touch of toe-in.

Originally Posted by Asobu

Why do you want camber by default?

See above. We are talking functional camber, not the -8 crap you see on tiltly wheel cars with 215s on 10" wide wheels.

[bradsm87]

Probably for best possible braking predictability under many different conditions as well as to understeer when pushed to legally cover themselves.

Nobody should run 0 camber on Mcpherson struts if you go around corners, street or not.

[dave99rt]

As mentioned, OEM understeer. Basically all vehicles have it.