Camber noob

[gt4dude]

Hey guys,

I've had my Celica ST205 for about 5 years now, I've had coilovers for 2 years, but I've never bothered to play with the camber.

Now after going so long with an idea of how my car SHOULD feel, I start experimenting with camber, I push my 2 front tophats in all the way (without moving the inner 2 bolts, i can get a setting half way between neutral and full negative.

Anyyyways, Now my steering feels abnormally light at low speeds, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I haven't pushed it hard at low speeds, high speeds feel pretty normal, but because of the lightened steering, it feels like im going to sledge every corner next rainy spell...

The camber i ended up setting looks pretty good visually, i have -2 in the back, up front looks like about -1 now instead of 0, but yeah it really doesnt feel good having super light steering in a heavy car, feels very wrong...

Maybe I had inadvertently added toe-in above factory specs by cambering negative as I did? the real question is, should my steering feel light after cambering negative? Or is something wrong

[CAMB01]

As soon as you go negative or positive camber you upset the toe settings. You will have pretty good toe in at the moment if you went negative camber.
Check your tyres they will be wearing really fast and on an angle.

[touge_ae101]

Superstrut so toe changes would be pretty minimal but def worth getting it checked out on an alignment machine.

You'll only get around 1.5deg negative max with superstrut which you'll hardly notice tbh. Lighter feeling is from not having full width contact patch on tyre. As soon as you corner or brake the tyre will deform and you'll have full grip. 1.5deg isn't enough to notice any tyre wear tbh unless all you do is motorway driving.. as long as your toe is set correctly mind you..

[gt4dude]

thanks man, that makes sense,

the first thing i did was go for a long 80km highway trip (winding roads, 100km/h)

I noticed it right away as i left town, going through a roundabout the wheels felt like they were floating on water almost. but then i got onto the highway and it felt really good, dare i say it felt better, seemed to be able to hold my line better in corners,

returning to the lightness feeling, it feels like next time it rains, i will have worse sledge at low speeds, do you think this will be the case and can this be corrected with the toe setting on the alignment machine? -Or- will I just end up getting over this feeling and find out that it actually improves


if you guys seem to indicate that its gonna be really crap unless im going fast, i may just return it back to 0

[touge_ae101]

its not guna be crap its guna be fine just a different feeling. it will make the tyre work the way it was designed to.

your spring rates won't be hard enough to make it crap in the rain because if you have suspension travel then you are transferring weight and the tyre will deform and grip like it is supposed to.

4.5deg on the front of my ae101 was fine in the wet I loved how it felt..