Front Caster and Camber

Long time no update right?

Today let’s talk about caster and camber as it pertains to drifting. Originally, I went by this write up by Mike Kojima. But it’s a bit out dated now and either my skills are better and this is for beginners, or the general idea and concept has changed.

I was rolling around with good old Rapper Dan Savage the other weekend and he noted that his “poop coupe” with angle mods had 3.4 degrees of caster. My E30 has 9.6 degrees (not necessarily on purpose). His rationale was that with more steering angle, the extreme caster would cause a lack of contact patch at full lock. This was also mirrored by his low camber (-2.3 degrees)

Stiffer suspensions cause less camber gain with suspension travel but lowered cars without roll center adjustment cause exponential camber gain. So it makes sense to add in some positive camber to gain forward line stability (on a straight away and small turns). The lack of caster will allow for the tires to maintain a greater contact patch near lock and allow for the driver to keep on throttle. Which of course means more smoke and “gangster angle”.

In practice, your ability to modify caster will likey be minimal. When I was younger, I’d just take my camber/caster plates and set them to max pos caster and max neg camber. Ironically, my camber plates are currently set max positive and I’m about to set my caster settings to max negative.

Word of caution: Caster effects for what’s called “self steer” or “wheel return”. The less caster, the less wheel return there will be. Some angle kits have modifications to “trail” which helps this. But regardless, steering might/will require more input with these settings.

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