how much does lowering the suspension affect camber?


feeesh^^

feeesh^^

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is it advisable to get a camber kit for both front and rear?

cheers,

benji
 
On the ek lowering doesn't appear to effect the camber massively, mostly thanks to the double wishbone system used.
 
It's not very clear, but at this height (pic below), my tyres are just in line with the arch (195/55/r15). My last geo said I had -2.3 deg of front camber and -2.5 deg of rear camber, all with standard camber arms.

I quite like the setup tbh, feels nice. But I run pretty aggressive toe settings.


DC5_EJ9_UNI by Rippu_Duggal, on Flickr
 
Does the ek9 have different arms to the ej? Haven't had that much camber on stock arms before.
 
Mind you I've never been that low either. Perhaps there's a threshold where the camber really starts coming in.
Interested in your toe setting now @R1PPU
 
@jesse888 they run the same arms so camber should (in theory) be consistent across the the ej/ek models.

I run 0.1 degree's toe out on the rear, and 0 toe on the front. Ideally I'd like a little more toe out on the rear, but the cars a daily so a compromise had to be made! It's probably nowhere near as aggressive as the setup on your car, but for a daily it works for me :)
 
The bottom arms are different in the ek9 I'm pretty sure? They are the beefy ones that don't split into two sections.
If the lengths the same then that's what matters in this case.
Ah right yeah toe out on the rear is a winner IMO. Not got it on the current car yet, haven't had time to play with it.
0.1 degree as in 6minutes? 60 minutes in a degree.
Is that total or each side?
My b18 9 was around 9 out total on the back so not far off.
 
Interestingly the new car has square toe settings (zero front and rear) but it was lively as anything at the back before I backed some camber off and fitted the diffuser.
Can't be sure the diffuser is actually doing anything but I changed both at the same time.
 
@jesse888 The bottom arm's themselves are the same across all models apart from the prefacelift EJ9, which doesnt have the mounting points for the droplinks. The facelift EJ9 and all of the rest are the same, I know this because I got a pair of SiR wishbones when I did my rebush to save having to mess about with the ones off the car.

I think you might be thinking of EG/DC2 FLCA's, they're the ones that split into two IIRC?

Yeah the turn in from rear toe out is what really makes the difference I found. Can make the car a bit more snappy depending on stiffness settings, but worth it! Yeah that conversion sounds about right! It was 0.1 degree on each side, so would be a total of 12 minutes, so pretty close like you said.

How's the suspension set on the new car? I tend to run mines quite soft (again due to daily duties), but I'd imagine that would be the biggest contributor? Is it the same ARB combo that you're running?
 
It all Depending how LOW you are going with the car..
keep in mind everytime you mess with suspension components ( struts, springs, arms, spindles, etc ) you are changing the geometry of it and certain things have to be re adjusted correctly...
​
 
Compared to the b18 9 it got softer suspension, otherwise it's mostly the same components.
More camber in the front on this one but not much.
The rear had more camber but changed that and it appears to have calmed down massively.
Only a 3rd of a turn on the rear arms seems to have done the trick.
 
thanks for the feedback Jesse

the arms should be identical, just different bushings in the lower arms

as far as I know the US civics had other front lower arms except for the Si models which had the same as the EDM cars

just going to throw on the suspension in spring and check the alignment, to see where I stand
 
jesse888 said:
Compared to the b18 9 it got softer suspension, otherwise it's mostly the same components.
More camber in the front on this one but not much.
The rear had more camber but changed that and it appears to have calmed down massively.
Only a 3rd of a turn on the rear arms seems to have done the trick.
Click to expand...

Never thought camber would make it more snappy, learn something new every day!
 
I didn't think so either, but was going through the differences between the new 9 and the old 9 where the rear suspension was concerned and that was one of them so tried it.
 
The more you lower the car the more negative camber you get all round, more so on the rear.

Front negative camber is great on the front for cornering grip but excessive negative camber on the rear creates more grip, which isn't what you want for a good turn in (IMO).

On my old SiR EK4, I lowered the car to about about finger gap between tyre and arch and the only camber adjustments I made were to add x1 set of 1mm washers to each rear camber arm to extend the length thus straightening the wheel, this minor adjustment made the turn in a hell of a lot better. I'm speaking from a tracking experience, but the same principle could be adopted on road to help prevent excessive tyre wear aswell. Make sure you get the toe sorted out before you go mad buying camber kits and see how it goes from there :nice:.

At this height I was running about -2 degress on front and -2.7 ish degrees on the rear, the washers brought the rear to -2.0 degrees.
 
^good idea with the washers:nice:
 
good info there Kipper, I think I will try that

the reason I brought this up in the first place is that in Japan the one make race series regulations state; original arms need to be used. those cars are quite low...
 
Kipper said:
The more you lower the car the more negative camber you get all round, more so on the rear.

Front negative camber is great on the front for cornering grip but excessive negative camber on the rear creates more grip, which isn't what you want for a good turn in (IMO).

On my old SiR EK4, I lowered the car to about about finger gap between tyre and arch and the only camber adjustments I made were to add x1 set of 1mm washers to each rear camber arm to extend the length thus straightening the wheel, this minor adjustment made the turn in a hell of a lot better. I'm speaking from a tracking experience, but the same principle could be adopted on road to help prevent excessive tyre wear aswell. Make sure you get the toe sorted out before you go mad buying camber kits and see how it goes from there :nice:.

At this height I was running about -2 degress on front and -2.7 ish degrees on the rear, the washers brought the rear to -2.0 degrees.
Click to expand...

Agree with the whole statement up until excessive camber=more grip.
From my own experience too much camber on any wheel(esp rear on a light fwd) causes a lack of grip.
We all know that we camber wheels to counter act body roll(so tyres have full thread on road when cornering) now too much camber and not enough body roll will have the same effect as too much body roll and not enough camber.
As I said above my car came with -2.5 on the rear and it was alittle too loose for my liking, backed the camber off a 1/3 of a turn(so less rear camber) and now it's much better, which would suggest it now has more grip.
It's defo a personal preference thing though which will always stir debate but laws of physics still apply.
 
jesse888 said:
Agree with the whole statement up until excessive camber=more grip.
From my own experience too much camber on any wheel(esp rear on a light fwd) causes a lack of grip.
We all know that we camber wheels to counter act body roll(so tyres have full thread on road when cornering) now too much camber and not enough body roll will have the same effect as too much body roll and not enough camber.
As I said above my car came with -2.5 on the rear and it was alittle too loose for my liking, backed the camber off a 1/3 of a turn(so less rear camber) and now it's much better, which would suggest it now has more grip.
It's defo a personal preference thing though which will always stir debate but laws of physics still apply.
Click to expand...

Yeh, I guess I streamlined my own experiences to the factual laws of car handling, However in my own case the rear camber I had originally had seemed to cause more tread contact with the surface when corning, I wanted to reduce this whilst cornering so thought I'd straighten the wheel up to combat this. Guess I took the driftcar setup approach for my FF car, I needed it more loose around the rear as the excess grip at rear was causing some unwanted understeer. But as you said, it's all personal preference, I love enjoy being able to control the rear with the accelerator :nice:. Although I used a very neutral setup at the 'ring for obvious reasons lol.
 
That's the black art of suspension isn't it, every chassis, every track and every driver requires different settings to make them all work together.
 
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