It's a well known fact that lowering a car increases the amount of negative camber and that a correlation exists between the two.
Does this work in the opposite direction? Does adding negative camber to a car with a Macpherson strut design (such as the thirdgen) also decrease the ride height according to the camber curve?

 

No.

Adjusting the camber in these cars = moving the top of the strut from side to side

Not hard to figure out, there's no up & down contained in that.

The reason lowering the car changes the camber, is because if you do it the hack r¡cer way of cutting the coils, you change the relative position of the lower control arm. THe LCA swings in an arc, not a straight line. Therefore there is a different distance parallel to the ground between the pivot bolts and the ball joints, which makes the bottom of the spindle to be closer to or farther from the center of the car depending on what point in its arc the LCA is at.

 

It does change ride height a very small amount. Going from positive to negative camber would most definitely lower the car slightly. When you change the camber you are rotating about a point on the ground that is where your king pin axis would hit if you drew a straight line down through the bottom of the tire tread. Since on a thirdgen we have a scrub radius offset from zero (its inboard). When the camber is say at +1 you have created an arm the length of of the tire from the king pin axis to the outside. The wider the tire the more its going to move up or down. Going inboard from 0 camber the arm is much shorter. So depending on how the tire deforms it might lower the car if that doesnt add height as fast as the distance from the x axis decreases(say the balljoint is 0,0 on a cartesian graph looking from the front)

 

Yeah... probably less than .005". Sheet of paper, MAYBE.

IOW, no.

 

Cheer up man. We all make mistakes.

And .005? You sure about that? I would have guessed more than that. Figure it out with some trig assuming no tire deflection. It will probably increase the difference if you did somehow model the tire deflection. Or you could just move your strut tower out to say 1.5 to -1.5 and measure.

 

If I pee right before making a pass, how much lower will my ET be?

How much more does a hard drive weigh when it's full, than when it's empty?

How much lower is my ride height when it's raining out, than when it's dry?



I guess there's a fine line sometimes between "theoretical" "accuracy", and practical concerns.

 

So I guess you are saying that you still don't know. That's cool man. As long as your happy with assumptions then I am happy for you

 

No; I NEVER said "you don't know", or "I don't know".

All I've said is, whatever the "theoretical" effect might be (which actually could go either way, depending on where the camber started out at), it's so TINY, it's below the noise floor.

 

It's cool bro. Even engineers make assumptions so don't feel bad. Hope your day gets better.

 

¿Assumptions? ¿Feel so bad? ¿Qué? Not sure where you're going with all this?

I"m not assuming anything, and I feel just fine, actaully. But thanks for the kind wishes for the rest of my day.... which I will be spending as an engineer. Working on solving problems with practical, measureable applications in the real world.

 

That reminds me of a new avatar idea...

 

Well crimeny! The trig should be easy for you then! And thank you for putting the punctuation in front of the words. Makes things so much easier for me - I'm starting to get three languages confused (four if you count what I learned in S. Fl. public school)
Anyway, peace and harmony my friend. I'm channeling positive energy for you from here!

 

Nothing useful appears to be forthcoming, so....

JamesC