Talk:Camber angle

This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Automobiles Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Automobiles, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of automobiles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AutomobilesWikipedia:WikiProject AutomobilesTemplate:WikiProject AutomobilesAutomobile articles Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Ah, the old chestnut about camber thrust, or developing forces more in line with the plane of the tire and wheel. Negative camber increases the effective footprint at high lateral force levels; the tire distorts at high side force levels and tends to "roll under" and lift the inside edge and run more on the outside shoulder. Beginning with negative camber results in a better footprint when this distortion occurs.

However, the part of the tire that contacts the ground is the only part that develops grip and it doesn't know anything about how the force got to it. The tire carcass has a different lateral stiffness than vertical stiffness but this only affects the amount of distortion, not the force that's developed, so it has no effect on grip developed due to forces. There may be indirect grip variance with camber that's a result of changes in the way the carcass behaves dynamically (it does a lot of flexing and wobbling as it goes around), but these are not the result of changing the direction of forces due to camber.