rec.autos.simulators

Toe-in means that when you look at your car FROM THE TOP it looks like that
/---\

                                              ---

                                                -

Camber means that when you turn the outside wheel will be on the ground with
more contact.

Toe helps for straight stability and turn in.

Camber as the setup option in GPL is what LL described, namely the angle
between the tire plane and the normal to the road when the car is
static. The things get more complicated when the car is cornering and
the suspension movements and body roll can also contribute to both
camber and toe. Unfortunately, GPL, while taking into account these
changes, does not visually depict the changes of wheel attitude due to
suspension movement thus making seting the camber and toe by watching
what the wheels are doing in corners that much harder.

One needs to be aware that a (slightly) cambered wheel produces a higher
force into the direction into which it is leaning than does a tyre that
is perfectly perpendicular to the road. The effect of camber is thus not
only to keep the tyre perpendicular when turning, but to keep it leaned
into the corner. Running the inner temperatures of the tires a bit
higher than the outer ones (you can do this by setting up the camber)
will produce best cornering forces. This can be seen on the front tires
of modern F1 cars, that have much more degradation on the inner parts of
the tires. The rears are set with less camber as this reduces the
traction, though.

You might object by saying that the inner tire is actually cambered away
from the corner thus reducing the overall cornering force. This is true,
but as most weight is on the outer tire during cornering, the effect of
the inner tire is much less. On tracks that have mostly corners of a
single type (ovals, for example), you can set up the wheels to lean in
the same direction, though (one with positive and the other with
negative camber) for this reason.

-Gregor

On the other hand Giovanni Tifosi has an interesting opposing viewpoint
at http://website.lineone.net/~richardn/Guru.html#FlatCamber.(an awesome
site !!) He implies that we should be using positive cambers (tops of tires
farther out than the bottoms) to keep the inside (unladen) tire flat. That
is
we should be seeing higher outside temps along the straights and even temps
on the inside tire in a turn. Giovanni gives a compelling argument for this.

I've been using this philosophy for awhile now but I don't know if I'm
alone.
I find that I can use lower camber settings then I used to. I'd really be
interested
to here from someone who has tried both. Perhaps it's better for you to
stick
with what's popular and stay with negative cambers. I may go back for a
"visit"
myself and see if I notice more grip.

Then again, there might be a better answer a few posts back.

Slot

Awesome indeed! I need to print this whole site out (remove the Guru...
stuff to get to the home page) and take a week's holiday to try and work
through it all! :-)

Andrew McP

I could go on for ages and write several pages of why this shouldn't
work, but I suggest reading a few books on the subject, although, this
is how you set up a car for ovals, inner tires positive camber, so it's
not wrong per se, it's just that you need to corner both ways :-), and
running positive camber on the outside wheel will give you hardly any
grip at all because the grip surface of the tire wouldn't be in contact
with the road at all, the combination of tire flex and positive camber
would have you running on the side walls of the tires, and they're not
actually optimized for corner grip :-), and this on the tires that
usually provide 80-100% of the cornering grip...

I'm not saying this won't work in GPL, but if it does, it's because
there's a flaw in the physics model, not because it's a good idea I'm
afraid

I don't have the time to test this right now, but would be very
interested to hear from those of you that will be testing this

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"Team Mirage" http://www.teammirage.com/
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Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

"Team Mirage" http://www.teammirage.com/
"The Pits"    http://www.theuspits.com/

* Spam is for losers who can't get business any other way *
"Spamkiller"    http://www.spamkiller.com