Can I increase my caster angle?
I'm at alignment school for work right now, and we were talking about how higher positive camber can increase high speed stability and make the steering a bit heavier. A lot of Mercedes and BMW cars apparently run like 9 degrees of caster for autobahn driving.
I went through some threads on here and someone recommended about 6 degrees. I don't know what stock is supposed to be, but I'm at about 5 degrees right now. Can I increase it to 7-8? Will this noticeably increase my high speed stability or just burn up my power steering? |
I run 7 and it's very predictable. Go to the racing section and there's an alignment thread you can post in. One guy is running 8 degrees of positive caster. My friend's E36 M3 and my buddy's E86 Z4 M coupe both run about 7.9 degrees. Some people will argue that 7 degrees is too much, but clearly they haven't driven a sports car or don't value handling. The only reason I'm seeing more people drop caster is to get more camber, but there are guys running 3-3.5 degrees of camber with 7 degrees of caster, so clearly you can have both worlds.
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i uped mine from around 5.2 ish to 6. and def made steering heavy, but so much better all around, you can feel it turning o much more, i want to add a lil more aster like 6.5 and add some more negative camber next alignment
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i believe people typically increase caster angles for autocross, and decrease them for HDPE
edit: by 'decrease' i mean relative to a higher caster set, not less than OEM recommended. |
the answer is yes, try it, see what you think.
the planted feeling the german cars have is due to a few things, and lots of castor is one of them. they also typically have a polar moment that is in the front, either with a heavy engine (BMW), or putting it in front of the axle (Audi). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_of_inertia the BMW's also tend to use a slower steering rack than the typical Mazda, so it takes more movement of the steering wheel to move the tires the same amount. a power steering Rx7 from 1986 has a 15:1 ratio, a BMW E30 has a 20:1 ratio, so the BMW is a bunch slower, which sucks when you're parking, but its good at 100mph. i'm not sure what the Rx8 is, 17:1? |
^^Rx8 is 16:1 I believe. My friend has an E36 M3 with an upgraded Z3 non-m steering rack that has a ratio of 14.5:1 and every time he drives my car, he says the steering feels much quicker, which I don't get exactly how that works?
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I aligned my car today, and it was already set at 7.9 on the left and 8.0 on the right, which explains why my steering feels different than other 8s that I have driven. I am going to try to throw it up on the rack again tomorrow and set it to around 6 and see what happens.
My camber is at -1.2 on the front, and -1.0 on the back, which seems to be working great! Totally even tire wear, and excellent traction. |
Originally Posted by Nopstnz8
(Post 4465816)
^^Rx8 is 16:1 I believe. My friend has an E36 M3 with an upgraded Z3 non-m steering rack that has a ratio of 14.5:1 and every time he drives my car, he says the steering feels much quicker, which I don't get exactly how that works?
BMW is German for 'oh that sounds great i'll take your word for it' |
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