Best Camber for Drifting?

[AeBaSupLook]

Originally posted by sccakid
Sadly, this site is full of meatheads who have no clue about drifting, or anything about driving at all...

and sadly, it looks like your one of them.

[sccakid]

Alright, no need to get your panties in a twist.

To clarify, the reason I posted was in regards to this quote...

Originally posted by mk3mann
negative camber is for lower torque cars that just cant kick the rear out like the higher Hp cars can....

negative camber just lets you have LESS of a contact patch....less friction...easier to kick out

these are things that you DONT want on a road race machine ( for grip racing)....only if you plan on sliding sideways do you need to do these things

...which is misleading and incorrect. If you think that negative camber has no place in road racing, maybe you should go to the racetrack sometime and take a look at some of the cars there. Negative camber is used on road race cars to increase the contact patch under cornering force and preserve the tires by not having them roll over onto the sidewall. However, you will generally see more negative camber on drift-specific cars than you will on road racers. Certainly negative camber isn't used only "for low torque cars that just can't kick the rear out".

[dae]

its hipari isnt it not hapri

[TrendLineMotor]

The best set up is the one that works for you.

mk3mann is wrong, sccakid is right

[Divius Drifter]

-2 camber sounds about right, to need camber to increase contact area with the front wheels for grip so that when you are able to controll a drift the rear end will follow that of the front tyres.

Personally the best way to find out what suspension and camber set-up is best for you is a matter of getting the parts installed and then taking it out to a track and tune it untill you are satisfied with the handling characteristics that suit you best, like that of many drivers. every one has their prefered setting.

[Octagon]

I'll just re-iterate what Crazy Hawaiian, Divius Drifter, and Ris4Drft have all said - there is no one single setup for drifting, even with two of the same cars.

Setup is all about application. There is no one single tuning factor that will make a car "the perfect drift machine". Negative camber is most often added (and rarely more than a degree or two) to increase lateral grip. By increasing lateral grip, you can (theoretically) make your car change direction more quickly (good for feints) and recover more easily from very steep slip angles.

The catch is that to work with more lateral grip, you need to (at least in my experience) drive the car in deeper to break loose from the added grip. Your direction changes have to be more violent and your entry speeds have to be higher.

And then when you do this, you have to take into consideration the rest of your setup. How are your spring and damping rates? With more violent direction changes you get more violent weight transfer. If the car rolls and howls like a stuck pig when you throw it into a corner, then more grip is definitely not going to be the answer. And what about your toe? Caster? Are those optimized too?

And how will you change the camber? Move the spindle on the strut? Change the angle of the strut by moving where it mounts to the inner fender? Adjustable control arms? All of these things can throw off suspension geometry in hundreds of ways, actually worsening handling instead of improving it.

Man, I spent way too much time around Jim Bodnar. lol