#negative camber

No compromise dually

Owner

Mike Barcia

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Many tuned cars have some negative camber. Today I’m gonna explain why it is done to the car and when it’s too much of it with some simplified graphical examples.

First of all let’s look at normal left tire riding on straight (view is from behind):

And when car turns right:

The thing is that tire mounted on wheel without camber in turn deforms (fights inertia). That deformation is unwanted and leads to uneven contact patch with road (sorry for unclear graphical example). This setup is found on many street cars, there are reasons why:

best for braking

more even tire wear 

better car launch grip

There is a trade-off. This setup compromises car’s cornering grip. Usually cornering is more taxing for car’s grip, so some people and many race cars have some negative camber. Let’s look at it:

left tire riding on straight:

left tire turning right:

Tire with some negative camber has better contact patch with road in turns, but this setup has disadvantages:

longer braking distance

uneven tire wear

worse car launch grip

In race situation or spirited driving session on the street (maybe even illegal racing), excluding drag it’s often possible to reduce lap time more by having more grip in corners, than having better braking.

Ricers, VIPs and stancers.

Both groups like negative camber, but usually if they want to have negative camber, they overdo it. Ricers think it looks cool and makes car faster. Stancers like negative camber due to making your car look lower that way. VIPs like to get as low as possible and negative camber helps them to achieve that result. Too bad that negative camber is often excessive and doesn’t do anything good (besides looking cool to some). Let’s look at graphical examples:

left tire riding on straight:

left tire turning right:

The problem is that excessive negative camber doesn’t have any grip advantage and reduces overall grip dramatically. That happens due to much smaller contact patch with the road, when going straight and in corners. Part of the tire never touches road or contacts weakly. That means:

worst braking out of these three setups

worst launch grip out of these three setups

worst cornering grip out of these three setups

very uneven tire wear, sometimes part of the tire doesn’t wear at all, while other is almost bald.

A Honda Civic is in need of a four-wheel alignment.

As it’s accelerating, the car pulls to the left side. The wheels also appear to have negative camber.

Camber is one of the adjustments we check during a car alignment. Caster and toe are other specifications.

Other than pulling to one side, you may notice a crooked steering wheel or uneven tire wear when a vehicle has a bad wheel alignment.