Tilted wheels. Why?

[Earl Marischal]

I understand that a degree of negative camber can assist road holding, but surely excessive angles ruin tyres and are potentially dangerous?

steve

 

[Mittagskind]

11 minutes ago, Earl Marischal said:

I understand that a degree of negative camber can assist road holding, but surely excessive angles ruin tyres and are potentially dangerous?

steve

 

May be it wants to retract the landing gear and lift off.😉

[stitchdup]

photoshop but the why is because people want their boring sedans to look like touring cars because touring cars just look cool.

[carsntrucks4you]

Speciality from Japanesse tuner. Absolutely senseless thats not photoshoped

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

3 hours ago, Earl Marischal said:

...a degree of negative camber can assist road holding, but surely excessive angles ruin tyres and are potentially dangerous?

Yes, and yes.

The degree of static negative camber that's beneficial is dependent on the specific design of the suspension geometry and the tires on the vehicle under scrutiny...and it's always a compromise between what's best for acceleration, braking, and cornering. 

The primary rational goal of any performance suspension modification is to increase traction. For any given tire, traction is increased by maintaining a contact patch between the tire tread and the road surface that is as large as possible. This is accomplished by keeping the tire tread flat on the ground, which happens when the wheel/tire centerline is perpendicular to the ground.

Cornering produces lateral loads on the tires, a tendency to slide sideways, and maintaining as large a contact patch as possible on the outside tires in a turn, the most heavily loaded ones, can often be achieved by the introduction of varying degrees of negative static camber...again, depending entirely on the general design of the suspension geometry (strut, upper and lower lateral control arms, trailing arms, etc.) and tires.

Unfortunately, many humans are content to operate on the "monkey see, monkey do" principle rather than make the effort to develop an UNDERSTANDING of what they're doing...because TLDR.

The OP's illustration is of an idiot's car.

 

Edited February 25 by Ace-Garageguy

[Tabbysdaddy]

They also do that to fit wider tires, so the tire doesn't stick out past the fender lip which is against vehicle code in some places. 

[Zoom Zoom]

I think it's done just to get old men to shake their fists at clouds. FWIW, I'm in that demographic 😁

[Lunajammer]

5 minutes ago, Zoom Zoom said:

I think it's done just to get old men to shake their fists at clouds.

This.

Purely an attention getting fad of audacity, like high lift, large diameter donk wheels. 

[blizzy63]

2 hours ago, Zoom Zoom said:

I think it's done just to get old men to shake their fists at clouds. FWIW, I'm in that demographic 😁

One of my favourites...

[peteski]

As I see it it is a fad done for looks.  It often goes alone with narrower low-profile tires stretched unrealistically onto wide rims.  It's a "bad boy" image.  It wrecks the tire and ride qualities. The handling is likely not very good either.  I don't shake my fists or yell at those - just roll my eyes.

But whatever . . . if it makes those guys think they are cool, so be it.

[niteowl7710]

Sooooo...this is a thread about old fart Americans not liking things done in Japan to VIP style cars? The cars are on air suspensions fellas, they lose the ridiculous camber when they're at normal ride heights. It's no different than any other "bagged" car done in the good Ole U.S. of A where the point is to drag the car as low as possible when you're showing it off. Nobody says you have to like it. Nobody from the Government is going to force you to slamber your daily driver...

This forum really will find nearly anything to complain about, sheesh go build a model...

[Zoom Zoom]

Every generation has done some seriously dumb/questionable "stuff" to perfectly good cars that makes said car less useful and more "hey, look at MEEE!!!!". My Dad gave me grief for putting black out trim and home-made air dams on my first three cars. Not quite the same level as making the cars drive worse than intended, but to him it was useless "hey, look at MEEEE!!!" adornment. Whatever. I get why people do it, but we all have differing tastes and that changes over time. Some cars end up stupid. Some reactions from those that don't get it are...stupid. Lather, rinse, repeat. Easier to laugh it off than get mad. I drive a 3rd gen Miata as a weekend car, and they're popular with enthusiasts from age 16 to roughly 108 🤣 

[bobss396]

I worked with a guy that had a dropped VW of some sort with the negative camber. He wore tires out in record time. When I was doing alignments, cars with excess negative camber were impossible to get on the rack we had. I guess alignments are not important to them.

[Daddyfink]

Oh, this again 

[MeatMan]

C'mon now, you don't remember being asked why is the back of your car was so high?
Think of the faux gasser look (street freaks to some, tho it was never a thing where I lived) with the front end pointing to the sky.
Young folks do dumb stuff to their cars, and other young folks love it!

[Ace-Garageguy]

6 minutes ago, MeatMan said:

C'mon now, you don't remember being asked why is the back of your car was so high?
Think of the faux gasser look (street freaks to some, tho it was never a thing where I lived) with the front end pointing to the sky.
Young folks do dumb stuff to their cars, and other young folks love it!

Yup.

And then, if you survive creating evil-handling me-too me-too stupidity, and if your interest in things mechanical came with a desire to understand how physics works (and its relationship to vehicle dynamics), you go on to learn to do mods that actually enhance performance rather than destroy it.

And THEN, when much later in life when you know what you're doing after decades of professional experience (and try to share some of that knowledge) you get called an old fart who shouts at clouds.

Ain't life grand.  

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

A young guy who gets it...

 

[Rockford]

I'm not saying what anyone should or shouldn't do but the fact is that negative camber does have a use, indeed many production cars have a slight negative camber to help the outer tyre in a turn plant more squarely onto the ground. This improves cornering as the weight of the vehicle shifts to the outer side of the car in a cornering situation, however it's only ever a marginal amount of camber because it does have a negative impact on tyre wear and a vehicle spends most of its life in a 'straight ahead' position. Race cars exaggerate camber because they spend much more of their life cornering and at highspeed, (most racing drivers don't take the wife, kids and groceries around the track with them) and tyre life is much less of an issue for them. They subject the chassis to much higher forces than a road car, thus causing more suspension deflection, weight transfer, tyre deformation etc... so the greater camber angle helps to plant the outer, greater weight bearing tyres more squarely on the ground producing more grip and higher speeds. The changes in geometry of a low rider that someone mentioned earlier demonstrates what happens to wheel angles as a suspension deflects, especially a traditional double wishbone with unequal length upper and lower arms. Hope that makes sense.

[StanGlover]

It’s purely for looks. It’s the younger generation’s version of this:

Like all automotive fads/customizing styles, there are terrible hack jobs out there done cheaply, and there are high dollar work-of-art builds done as a statement. 

[stitchdup]

When i did my mk3 golf ride quality had nothing to do with it. My biggest concern was where the wheel arch sat when the car was aired out. To get the rear wheels to look like they fitted standard arches took me and a friend months of work. We started with the stock rear axle and tried our hardest to get the 9s to fit but in the end we had to swap to a mk1 golf axle. This meant my friend spent most evening for 2 month layed on his back welding in the rear floor from the mk1 to the mk3. When that was done we had to use various parts from other vws to make more space. the brakes were from a lupo 3l as they were narrower than the others we tried. Then we found the wheels didn't sit in the centre of the arch when dropped (it happens on every low vw hatchback) so we had to get some custom drop plates made that moved the axle back on full drop. All this work so the wheel arch sat between the tyre and rim on full drop and yes it involved camber and stretched tyres. After all this the front was a piece of cake and just needed the offset changed on the wheels when they got banded. It was all about the look when it was parked and my reason for that was why should i care how it looked moving, i only saw it parked. It drove decently but it wasn't a car i would drive fast, not because it was unsafe but because i wanted it to be seen. If I had raised the floor a couple inches i could probably have driven it on good roads at full drop but as it was i drove it 50mm from the ground. My oilpan needed a bash guard and i went through bushings something rotten on the front but it looked cool to me so it was worth it. to look at the car you'd think it was just a lowered stocker but it was much more than that and i sorta enjoyed nobody really knowing how much work it was. I appreciate the look isn't for everyone but i wanted to explain some how i did it.

but my cars were always the lowest. I got given an old peugeot 405 wagon that was pretty worn out so me and my mate used a citroen bx suspension for a dirt cheap hydraulic system. it was up to the job, lol

[Ace-Garageguy]

There have always been two schools of thought regarding vehicle mods: "form-follows-function", and everything else.

The two sides don't see eye to eye, never will, and the Beach Boys even did a song called No-Go Showboat way back in the '60s.

As someone who enjoys driving as opposed to posing, I don't understand the motivation behind ruining a vehicle's capability to be driven enthusiastically to engage in "look at me".

Nosebleed "gassers", donks, poorly-built rat-rods, butt-in-the-air long-shackle whatever-you-call-ems, tail-squatting trucks, monster-tired 4X4s, and excessively-cambered cars all fit the latter category.

But build whatever you want. It's your money and time. I don't care. And you're usually good for a laugh.  

My "worn out junk" '89 GMC pickup will out-handle any of ya while hauling a quarter-ton of manure.  

EDIT: I'm going to shout at the gray overcast sky right now, because I can't see any individual clouds. 

 

Edited February 27 by Ace-Garageguy

[Mark]

The tilted wheels are just this generation's version of tail-dragging customs, extremely jacked-up street machines (Rod & Custom featured some really bad ones in the late Sixties), fake superchargers, putting pretty much anything on a 4 X 4 chassis, and the all-time stupidity of "rolling coal".

I remember reading about some guy getting chewed out by his dad for putting a floor shifter in his car.  Dad thought the column shifter was the best thing since sliced bread, and "here you idiots go, putting it back on the floor!"

[Ace-Garageguy]

42 minutes ago, Mark said:

The tilted wheels are just this generation's version of tail-dragging customs, extremely jacked-up street machines (Rod & Custom featured some really bad ones in the late Sixties), fake superchargers, putting pretty much anything on a 4 X 4 chassis, and the all-time stupidity of "rolling coal".

I remember reading about some guy getting chewed out by his dad for putting a floor shifter in his car.  Dad thought the column shifter was the best thing since sliced bread, and "here you idiots go, putting it back on the floor!"

The move to column-shifters for manual gearboxes was a marketing thing more than anything else. "Newer more modren" and all that.

And a floor-shift retrofit WAS a definite functional improvement when it came to spirited driving.

You ever tried to speed-shift or road-race with a 3-on-the-tree?

Edited February 27 by Ace-Garageguy
TYPO

[Mark]

I'm assuming Dad thought the column shift created more room up front, and wasn't doing any spirited sort of driving.

[espo]

I wish I could remember where I saw an article about a tire maker that was actually making a tire designed for what these people are doing with their Cambered vehicles. What it looked like the tire maker was doing was to make the sidewalls on the inside of the tire shorter than the outside of the tire. I have know ideas as to how this was accomplished production wise, but from the picture provided in the article they did have a larger contact patch on the tire with still having a raised outer edge of the tire. This also will pass in time.