We are using a GKTech caster camber plate. There were designed to mount under the shock towers to allow for extreme strut upper bearing locations when using maximum angle kits without having to notch the strut tower opening for clearance. We used to do the exact same thing for our pro drift car but had to custom fabricate a part like this. The GKTech plate allows extreme movement of the strut-bearing location unconstrained by the size of the hole in the strut tower by putting it under the top of the shock tower.
The GKTech plate is designed so you can drop your coil-overs existing camber plate into it. This gives you camber adjustment via the plate and tons of for and aft position adjustment for a caster and wheel well centering. When combined with the GKTech lower arm, you get an amazing amount of adjustment for the tire’s wheel well positioning and suspension alignment. The great thing about all of the GKTech parts together is that you can set your wheel in the middle of the wheel well for best clearance yet still get any caster, camber, and kingpin inclination setting you desire. No other suspension brand to our knowledge has that ability.
To prevent tie rod over centering, we got GKTech’s offset tie rod mounts. They move the tie rods forward in proportion to the steering rack location to prevent over-centering of the tie rods at full lock. Over centering causes the steering to stick and the inside wheel to wobble due to a toggle effect where the tie rod to steering arm relationship goes almost straight. The tie rod and rack then cannot control the steering location of the wheel. At this point, any small amount of play or flex in any of the steering parts is amplified and the wheel will just wobble.
7 comments
looks fanstastic! I always wondered about these arms and knuckles. Thank you for the in-depth review
“ Road racing cars need Ackerman in their front steering geometry and typically you want a gradually rising Ackerman curve that is slightly less than the geometric true Ackerman. For drifting, you want a digressive Ackerman curve. This tends to understeer in grip driving. GKTech makes 3 different knuckles. A grip driving one, a drift/grip one, and a super angle drift only one.”
^This really is ‘the secret’ to handling with rubber tires and their slip angles. In F1, I know that they even do an Anti-Ackerman setup!
https://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8874
Until you understand these principles in theory and practice, you can’t really have a solid understanding of how to make a car handle.
It’s weird with open-wheel cars, We found that anti-Ackerman causes understeer in road racing in sedan-based cars.
I think it has everything to do with the tire. I am sure that F1 had to change up the anti-Ackerman when they switched to 18” wheel rims this year.
The ‘max lateral load’ (and associated ideal slip angles) for radial street tires is probably way different than the race rubber they run in F1. Also, downforce needs to be factored in.
My Holy Bible on tires is this book, if anyone that wants to race a car is serious about winning, or just being competitive, don’t get a HUGE REAR WING, please read the bleeping manual!
I ordered a copy and the author Paul Haney even signed it! What a guy! So happy for him to take my money!
https://www.standardsmedia.com/The-Racing-and-High-Performance-Tire-8627-book.html
I ordered the book!
they didn’t have it!
the book is out of print, considered a rare book and no one has it!