The Ultimate Guide to Suspension and Handling: Part Six, Adding Negative Camber

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The Ultimate Guide to Suspension and Handling: Part Five, Adding Negative Camber

Avoid using the undersized shaft, eccentric cammed bolts sold under the name of crash bolts.  Crash bolts are sold as a cheap way to adjust camber on crash damaged cars. Because of the small shaft diameter, they usually stretch and allow the camber adjustment to slip under the load of hard driving with sticky tires.

The Ultimate Guide to Suspension and Handling: Part Five, Adding Negative Camber
 MacPherson struts will slightly gain negative camber under roll at first which is good, but as the roll angle increases they will actually lose negative camber, not good!  It is really important to limit roll on strut equipped cars for this reason.  The lower rate of negative camber gain is why you must usually run more negative camber on a strut car when compared to multi link or unequal length A arm suspension cars.

Cars with multilink or unequal length A-Arm suspension can sometimes use adjusting shims in the upper control arm mount to adjust camber.  For popular sports models like the 240SX, 300ZX, 350Z, STI and EVO there are plenty of adjustable links on the market to adjust camber.  Many multilink or unequal length A arm cars have adjustable camber from the factory.

The Ultimate Guide to Suspension and Handling: Part Five, Adding Negative Camber
Cars with unequal length A arm or multi link suspension gain camber through the entire suspension travel.  They are engineered to have a faster rate of negative camber gain under roll than what is possible with the crude and simple MacPherson strut.  This is a reason why cars with this sort of suspension typically handle better and why more expensive cars have this type of suspension.

Adjusting camber is well worth the effort, optimizing the camber for your type of car and driving style can often make a bigger difference in the amount of stick the car can generate than any other mod besides tires.

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