Hey...

I saw a 3-series BMW that had been lowered slightly. I happened to glance at the tires and saw that they were not standing up completely vertical.... they appeared to be either like this:

/ \

or like this:

\ /

I think it was probably the first scenario....obviously not quite as angled though. I hear you guys talking about camber kits quite a lot. Is the purpose of the camber kit just to correct this problem with the tires after lowering? So the tires would stand completely vertical:

| |


Always learning........

 

Hey StreetSpirit,

Most cars when lowered have scenario #1 ( / \ ). It's called "toe in" -- cars will do that to enhance cornering (look at F1 racing esp Schumi's car). The downside is that you wear away the outer edge of the tire (not a problem for F1 since they only drive on a set of tires for 100 miles or less!)

For our car, you'll probably want to have less than 1 degree of camber. This is where I'm not clear. Depending on the way the tire is, there is positive ( + ) or negative ( - ) camber. I think when you have toe in, it's positive camber (so you don't have oversteer).

To have your car sit properly (ie tires perpendicular to the road), you'll need to adjust camber. The car can have its camber intrinsically manipulated only a small amount. You'll need a camber kit to adjust camber by a larger amount (+/- 1 or more).

I think if you did a search in the tires/wheels section, they have discussed camber. Anyhow, I hope this was helpful. More importantly, if any of my stuff is wrong, someone please correct me!

- derrick

 

Thanks for the info, derrick!

I actually don't need this info because of my own car.... I'm just trying to learn something new... I just laughed when I saw this BMW because the tires just did not look right and all I kept wondering was how this owner could drive the car and not bother adjusting the angle of the tires.... I'm sure he's doin' horrible things to the tire, resulting in definite uneven wear. The tires weren't even close to sitting properly....

 

Almost every BMW I see looks like it needs a camber kit on the back. That is probably why they seem to handle so good on the corners. I wonder what the spec is for their rear camber?

 

Every BMW with the sport package has a slightly more negative camber. Even the X5 sport. Its to reduce oversteer and improve handling in corners. BMW does this on purpose. The inner toe wear on BMW's is much less than you would think, as the suspension system in the car is designed specificaly to compensate for the negative camber. It does kill the tires, but not even as remotly as fast as if a TL had too much of a negative camber.

My camber is at -0.9 in the rear, you can barley see my wheels in the "/ \" scenario. I sould get a camber kit, but my tires are wearing OK so im not worried about it this moment.

Derrick is right on pretty much. THe only pain in the ass with not doing a camber kit on our cars when you lower them is that you totaly max out the camber in the rear (with a 1.5inch drop) and that upper control arm and joint has a lot of stress on it when your hard in a turn. Also, when going over lumps in the road, you can see my rear wheels moving back and fourth (/ l \ / l \).

hope this helps!

 

What kind of drops you guys got? How low do your cars sit.... I was just curious because I wanted to get the comptech springs to lower my car and up unitil this point I was thinking that the drop should be within OEM specifications.... Will it????

The compmtech springs will lower the car about 1.5 inches right? This level should not effect the camber too much.... it should wear the tire evenly???? If I am wrong someone chime in and tell me.... I have seen some of the cars that are slammed and I don't think the springs I want will have that effect...

 

Just to clarify:

Toe in/out is different from camber. If you looked down on the front wheels from above the car, the / \ or \ / relationship of the tires you'd see is toe in/out. It's not unusual to have a little toe in as part of the alignment spec depending on the car because when a vehicle is in forward motion, the tires tend to toe out; the little initial toe in corrects for this. However, when you look at the tires from the front or back of the car, the tire leaning in/out is camber, / \ is negative, \ / is positive.