Originally posted by Big Jim:
Excessive camber, either negative or positive, make the tire want to conform to the shape of a conical section.

Toe is the primary tire wear angle. Unfortunitely too many alignment techs have taken the attitude that all they need to do to set an alignment is "set the toe and let it go". In so doing they all to often miss additional significant problems.

One of the most critical factors to this discussion is that alignment is not a static thing. Alignment is dynamic. The attempt to setting alignment is to somewhat guess at what will end up being appropriate when the car is in motion, not sitting on an alignment rack. Toe changes with road force and drivetrain power. Caster and camber changes as the vehicle bounces up and down and as it corners. Alignment also changes some just from the additional weight load in the car and how it is distributed. One of the most critical lessons taught in a basic alignemnt class is that if you are aligning a car that has a very heavy driver, it is best to have the driver in the car while making adjustments so you can compensate weight induced pull or wear.




That's why I keep harping on good toe control too. If your [censored]'s worn out, camber will increase the wear rate, but the camber isn't as much the cause as the toe is.

Of course, we can't forget camber control too. If the control arm bushings are allowing lateral movement under side loading, they'll make a tough camber setting worse on the inside tire in a turn (the one that's also being dragged across the pavement by crappy ackerman, poor toe setting, or poor toe control), and it'll cause positive camber gain on the outside tire, causeing OUTside edge tire wear. I understand that. I also understand that camber curves on strut-suspension cars are less than optimal, especially when they're lowered, but that's another reason for MORE negative camber; negative camber is gained at a decreasing rate as the suspension compresses past a certain pont.

My main point in all of this is to temper the usual fear-mongering over running desirable levels of negative camber. People just blurt out that that kills tires. It does not, unless there's an underlying issue causing the wear in the first place, in which case yes, the wear will be significant.

Put another way, you can mitigate a poor tire-wear situation by running conservative camber settings, but that's treating the symptom, not the illness, and it's not the camber that's causing significant wear.

So to be safe, stick to less camber. If you want to run more camber, you can, but you have to make sure your componentry and other settings are good.

Everybody happy?

Pacific Green '96 Contour LX V6 â??98 GTP, light mods, 14.66/94 Calypso Green '92 Mustang LX coupe, 13.56/101 Crown Autocross Club 1999 Street Tire Champion, 2000/2001/2002 Street Modified Champion KCR SCCA 2002 Solo II Street Modified Champion