[!Zar!]

Originally Posted by fckillerbee

mercer right?

from what I could imagine. Road cars achieve more G's in a corner than a drift car would. I would think that upon first initiating, we would achieve the maximum amount of g forces, and once settled and on thorrle, the g forces would be moved in another direction, and those suspension settings would be more prominent to a drag car with less traction.

road cars have what...all 4 tires using friction. vs a drift car would have foward traction coming from the rear, as well as lateral traction. But the front tires would not add too much traction laterally as they should be pointing in the direction we are trying to acheive.

I guess I couldn't imagine a drift cars front tires being used as heavily as a road cars front tires.




any expert opinions? You've been driving for a while....anything you notice in your fc?

Mercer? I'm not Chmercer lol. While I do agree that drift cars are not maintaining G-forces as long as actual road race cars, they are still experiencing body roll.

This picture shows that the full face of the tire is now hitting the ground (which in turn will give more grip) due to camber. I have experienced this personally in terms of grip. When I ran more camber in back, my car was able to gain speed faster due to the fact that there was more tire contacting the ground. Subsequently, running too little camber in back will make the car feel a little twitchy during transitions, and over all; but that can be more towards what tire you run.

Originally Posted by Perfect Balance

I think in the case of a 240sx, which have McPherson struts up front with a lot of caster, a lot of camber up front helps keep the tires flat while countersteering to provide grip for adjusting the car or braking, which in a drift car is more important than cornering grip, especially considering that it is only used on turn in. Overdoing the camber will still introduce understeer though, but a driver can work around that with weight transfer, end result being a car that is more controllable during a drift. I.e. when it's doing most of it's work.

I imagine in the rear you would want to run less camber than you would for grip, since like you said there are less lateral forces being applied. This used to make perfect sense until people started running positive camber on the rear in Formula D. I have no freaking clue what that does and how that works, so my view on rear camber in drift cars is subject to change.

For the front, you definitely want to run camber being as how as you mentioned, with our cars, they start going positive once you turn the wheel. Yes, too much camber up front does give you reduced grip during initiation. Best bet is to try and run as little camber as your caster/knuckle setup allows. Generally you would like to have the full face touching the ground at lock, and adjust camber accordingly to have such happen.

Originally Posted by Perfect Balance

That's kind of the story I heard too, but, it might just be at zero, but it looks like these cars are also running positive camber.

(pictures)
Then again it might just be me. If they aren't running positive camber, then they're running right at 0, which still doesn't really make sense to me as far as making it drift faster.

Only person I have heard from multiple people running positive camber in rear is Forsberg. I know Matt Fields isn't running positive camber in rear.

Originally Posted by Perfect Balance

With 0 camber, in a drift , you will only be using the outside edge of the outside tire, and the inside edge of the inside tire during the drift. With some negative camber, they will still be able to use the entire outside tire, which is the one with most grip in the corner anyway, therefore giving the car more grip during the grip, and as a result, more speed. The inside tire won't have much grip, but it has the least potential for grip anyway because it's on the inside and unloaded.

I fail to see how having 0 camber, or what appear to be positive camber, helps during a drift.

I'm still lost as what you mean by "tire speed catching up".

You all need to remember that a lot of these cars are running softer suspension setups, so on some of them they gain camber as they squat. Possibly on Forsberg's car he has static positive camber, but once he is on the throttle and the car squats the camber goes negative.

Also, grip is attained through running rear toe as well, camber isn't the only source of rear end grip.