What Is Camber, Caster and Toe?

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Handling Basics
The three major alignment parameters on a car are toe, camber, and caster. Most enthusiasts have
a good understanding of what these settings are and what they in-volve, but many may not know
why a particular setting is called for, or how it affects performance. Let's take a quick look at this
basic aspect of suspension tuning.

Understanding Toe
When a pair of wheels is set so that their leading edges are pointed slightly towards each other, the
wheel pair is said to have toe-in. If the leading edges point away from each other, the pair is said to
have toe-out. The amount of toe can be expressed in degrees as the angle to which the wheels are
out of parallel, or more commonly, as the difference between the track widths as measured at the
leading and Toe-in Toe-out trailing edges of the tires or wheels. Toe settings affect three major
areas of performance: tire I'll I 4 wear. straight-line stability and corner entry handling characteristics.

For minimum tire wear and power loss, the wheels on a given axle of a car should point directly
ahead when the car is running in a straight line. Excessive toe-in or toe-out causes the tires to scrub.
since they are always turned relative to the direction of travel. Too much toe-in causes accelerated
wear at the outboard edges of the tires, while too much toe-out causes wear at the inboard edges.
So if minimum tire wear and power loss are achieved with zero toe, why have any toe angles at all?
The answer is that toe settings have a major impact on directional stability. The illustrations at right
show the mechanisms involved. With the steering wheel centered, toe-in causes the wheels to tend
to roll along paths that intersect each other. Under this condition, the wheels are at odds with each
other, and no turn results.

When the wheel on one side of the car encounters a disturbance, that wheel is pulled rearward
about its steering axis. This action also pulls the other wheel in the same steering direction. If it's a
minor disturbance, the disturbed wheel will steer only a small amount. perhaps so that it's rolling
straight ahead instead of toed-in slightly. But note that with this slight steering input, the rolling paths
of the wheels still don't describe a turn. The wheels have absorbed the irregularity without
significantly changing the direction of the vehicle. In this way, toe-in enhances straight-line stability.

If the car is set up with toe-out, however, the front wheels are aligned so that slight disturbances
cause the wheel pair to assume rolling directions that do describe a turn. Any minute steering angle
beyond the perfectly centered position will cause the inner wheel to steer in a tighter turn radius than
the outer wheel. Thus, the car will always be trying to enter a turn, rather than maintaining a straight
line of travel. So it's clear that toe-out encourages the initiation of a turn, while toe-in discourages it.

The toe setting on a particular car becomes a tradeoff between the straight-line stability afforded by
toe-in and the quick steering re-sponse promoted by toe-out. Nobody wants their street car to con-
stantly wander over tar strips—the never-ending steering corrections required would drive anyone
batty. But racers are willing to sacrifice a bit of stability onthe straightaway for a sharper turn-in to the
corners. So street cars are generally set up with toe-in, while race cars are often set up with toe-out.

With four-wheel independent suspension, the toe must also be set at the rear of the car. Toe settings
at the rear have essentially the same effect on wear, directional stability and turn-in as they do on
the front. However, it is rare to set up a rear-drive race car toed out in the rear, since doing so
causes excessive oversteer, particularly when power is applied. Front-wheel-drive race cars, on the
other hand, are often set up with a bit of toe-out, as this induces a bit of oversteer to counteract the
greater tendency of front-wheel-drive cars to understeer.

Remember also that toe will change slightly from a static situation to a dynamic one. This is most
noticeable on a front-wheel-drive car or independently suspended rear-drive car. When driving
torque is applied to the wheels, they pull themselves for-ward and try to create toe-in. This is another
reason why many front-drivers are set up with toe-out in the front. Likewise, when pushed down the
road, a non-driven wheel will tend to toe itself out. This is most noticeable in rear-drive cars.
The amount of toe-in or toe-out dialed into a given car is de-pendent on the compliance of the
suspension and the desired handling characteristics. To improve ride quality, street cars are
equipped with relatively soft rubber bushings at their suspension links, and thus the links move a fair
amount when they are loaded. Race cars, in contrast, are fitted with steel spherical bearings or very
hard urethane, metal or plastic bushings to provide optimum rigidity and control of suspension links.
Thus, a street car requires a greater static toe-in than does a race car, so as to avoid the condition
wherein bushing compliance allows the wheels to assume a toe-out condition.

It should be noted that in recent years, designers have been using bushing compliance in street cars
to their advantage. To maximize transient response, it is desirable to use a little toe-in at the rear to
hasten the generation of slip angles and thus cornering forces in the rear tires. By allowing a bit of
compliance in the front lateral links of an A-arm type suspension, the rear axle will toe-in when the
car enters a hard corner; on a straightaway where no cornering loads are present, the bushings
remain undistorted and allow the toe to be set to an angle that enhances tire wear and stability
characteristics. Such a design is a type of passive four-wheel steering system.

The Effects of Caster

Positive caster tends to straighten the wheel when the vehicle is traveling forward, and thus is used
to enhance straight-line stability. The mechanism that causes this tendency is clearly illustrated by
the castering front wheels of a shopping cart (above). The steering axis of a shopping cart wheel is
set forward of where the wheel contacts the ground. As the cart is pushed forward, the steering axis
pulls the wheel along, and since the wheel drags along the ground, it falls directly in line behind the
steering axis. The force that causes the wheel to follow the steering axis is proportional to the
distance between the steering axis and the wheel-to-ground contact patch—the greater the distance,
the greater the force. This distance is referred to as "trail."

Due to many design considerations, it is desirable to have the steering axis of a car's wheel right at
the wheel hub. If the steering axis were to be set vertical with this layout, the axis would be
coincident with the tire contact patch. The trail would be zero, and no castering would be generated.
The wheel would be essentially free to spin about the patch (actually, the tire itself generates a bit of
a castering effect due to a phenomenon known as "pneumatic trail," but this effect is much smaller
than that created by mechanical castering, so we'll ignore it here). Fortunately, it is possible to create
castering by tilting the steering axis in the positive direction. With such an arrangement, the steering
axis intersects the ground at a point in front of the tire contact patch, and thus the same effect as
seen in the shopping cart casters is achieved.

The tilted steering axis has another important effect on suspension geometry. Since the wheel
rotates about a tilted axis, the wheel gains camber as it is tumed. This effect is best visualized by
imagining the unrealistically extreme case where the steering axis would be horizon-tal—as the
steering wheel is turned, the road wheel would simply change camber rather than direction. This
effect causes the outside wheel in a turn to gain negative camber, while the inside wheel gains
positive camber. These camber changes are generally favorable for cornering, although it is possible
to overdo it.

Most cars are not particularly sensitive to caster settings. Nevertheless, it is important to ensure that
the caster is the same on both sides of the car to avoid the tendency to pull to one side. While
greater caster angles serve to improve straight-line stability, they also cause an increase in steering
effort. Three to five degrees of positive caster is the typical range of settings, with lower angles being
used on heavier vehicles to keep the steering effort reasonable.

What is Camber?
Camber is the angle of the wheel relative to vertical, as viewed from the front or the rear of the car. If
the wheel leans in towards the chassis, it has negative camber; if it leans away from the car, it has
positive camber (see next page). The cornering force that a tire can develop is highly dependent on
its angle relative to the road surface, and so wheel camber has a major effect on the road holding of
a car. It's interesting to note that a tire develops its maximum cornering force at a small negative
camber angle, typically around neg. Vi degree. This fact is due to the contribution of camber thrust,
which is an additional lateral force generated by elastic deformation as the tread rubber pulls through
the tire/road interface (the contact patch).
To optimize a tire's performance in a corner, it' s the job of the suspension designer to assume that
the tire is always operating at a slightly negative camber angle. This can be a very difficult task,
since, as the chassis rolls in a corner, the suspension must deflect vertically some distance. Since
the wheel is connected to the chassis by several links which must rotate to allow for the wheel
deflection, the wheel can be subject to large camber changes as the suspension moves up and
down. For this reason, the more the wheel must deflect from its static position, the more difficult it is
to maintain an ideal camber angle. Thus, the relatively large wheel travel and soft roll stiffness
needed to provide a smooth ride in passenger cars presents a difficult design challenge, while the
small wheel travel and high roll stiffness inherent in racing cars reduces the engineer's headaches.

It's important to draw the distinction between camber relative to the road, and camber relative to the
chassis. To maintain the ideal camber relative to the road, the suspension must be designed so that
wheel camber relative to the chassis becomes increasingly negative as the suspension deflects
upward. The illustration on the bottom of page 46 shows why this is so. If the suspension were
designed so as to maintain no camber change relative to the chassis, then body roll would induce
positive camber of the wheel relative to the road. Thus, to negate the effect of body roll, the
suspension must be designed so that it pulls in the top of the wheel (i.e., gains negative camber) as
it is deflected upwards.

While maintaining the ideal camber angle throughout the suspension travel assures that the tire is
operating at peak efficiency, designers often configure the front suspensions of passenger cars so
that the wheels gain positive camber as they are deflected upward. The purpose of such a design is
to reduce the cornering power of the front end relative to the rear end, so that the car will understeer
in steadily greater amounts up to the limit of adhesion. Understeer is inherently a much safer and
more stable condition than oversteer, and thus is preferable for cars in-tended for the public.
Since most independent suspensions are designed so that the camber varies as the wheel moves
up and down relative to the chassis, the camber angle that we set when we align the car is not
typically what is seen when the car is in a corner. Nevertheless, it's really the only reference we have
to make camber adjustments. For competition, it's necessary to set the camber under the static
condition, test the car, then alter the static setting in the direction that is indicated by the test results.

The best way to determine the proper camber for competition is to measure the temperature profile
across the tire tread immediately after completing some hot laps. In general, it' s desirable to have
the inboard edge of the tire slightly hotter than the outboard edge. However, it's far more important to
ensure that the tire is up to its proper operating temperature than it is to have an "ideal" temperature
profile. Thus, it may be advantageous to run extra negative camber to work the tires up to
temperature.

Testing is Important
Car manufacturers will always have recommended We, caster, and camber settings. They arrived at
these numbers through exhaustive testing. Yet the goals of the manufacturer were probably different
from yours, the competitor. And what works best at one race track may be off the mark at another.
So the "proper" alignment settings are best deter-mined by you—it all boils down to testing and
experimentation.