New dpracing offset camber plates

[RTB]

Decided I am going to stick with my comp suspension so I no longer need these camber plates. I ordered them from troy ermish, still sitting in the box. Asking 250 for them. Also have zx struts that I can sell with the plates . Call or text 913-530-4646 if interested. Price includes shipping.

[RTB]

Lowered price bump

[SteveEdmonton]

What's the advantage to the offset?

Maybe that sounds like a dumb question. What I mean is, it's pretty clear that the offset changes the caster compared to "straight-up" camber plates, but I'm not sure about the reason why you'd want to do so. From what I gather, going to 280ZX struts makes adjustable camber a very good idea. The caster part is a little more of a mystery to me.

Thanks for whatever light you can shed.

[James]

Added Caster provides a lot more stability at high speeds. Can increase steering effort as well. Both Byron and Bertvorgon can add a lot more to this…...

[JordanTr]

It adds dynamic camber/camber gain on the outside wheel during cornering to benefit handling. Take a look at a newer German car that has been parallel parked at full lock. It'll show the outside wheel with oodles of negative camber and the inside wheel with positive camber to help maximize the contact patch.

[bertvorgon]

Yes, castor is a good thing for handling.....if that is what you are after. Our 510's really benefit from this for high speed driving, and, for hard cornering. As the wheel turns, the induced camber really helps with turn in and decreasing understeer. There is also the high speed stability, which I really like when over 100 MPH, so when you get to some corners, the so called force feed back through the steering wheel makes carving some very consistant lines through corners ver easy and stable.

The only real downside is that as the castor goes UP, say to 5.5 - 6 degrees, the steering at very slow speeds becomes a real work out, IE parking, or doing 3 point turns.

In my 510 for example, when I turn my steering wheel, you can see the front fender start to lift, and at one point of my racing, when I ran more than 6 degrees, the front lifted a bit more than 1/4 inch. Think about that, you are literally lifting the front of the car with the steering wheel.

I run 5.5 now, which is an excellent balance between high speed stability, and not having to fight the car at parking lot speeds. We should not be parking anyhow, we are meant to drive FAST......

I have mentioned this before, believe it or not, at the height of my solo racing, the huge castor setting was a bit of an issue on the tight turns of course, yet, on the high speed stuff, I would actually lightly let go of the steering wheel, letting the self centering action center the wheel, where you physically could not bring it back as fast with your arms. Worked like a damn, why fight it. It just shows how much dynamic force is actually going on.

[housew]

Or a 70s ford truck cause they needed to to keep them from darting off the road.

more caster makes the car self center, also adds stability and dynamic camber as said.

[SteveEdmonton]

Very helpful replies, thanks everyone. I remember reading some of this before, but without having had a "need to know," it sort of went in one eyeball and out the other...

Keith, you've obviously got plates that let you adjust the caster as well as the camber. That makes sense, given how much fine-tuning you'd want / need to do to get things set up just right. Soooooo.... what about these plates from DPR? Looks to me like they have a single, fixed caster angle ("offset"). Or am I misinterpreting what I'm seeing in the pics?

[RTB]

You could have a castor adjustment. You could elongate the holes for mounting the plate and that would give you castor adjustment. You wouldn't get a huge range but it would be something.

[Byron510]

Hi Steve,

The camber plates themselves won't increase the caster very much, most are around 1.5 degrees when making use of the smallest diameter spring. You just run out of strut tower space at that point.
As Keith mentioned, more is better. Generally we get as much as we can up top from the camber plates, and then use as much adjustment at the bottom using adjustable TC rods to "dial it in". How much you want to dial in truly depends on your goals, needs and what you are willing to trade off in. Low speeds maneuverability compared to high speed stability.

The side benefits of caster angles over 4 degrees is the "caster induced camber" that simply becomes present due to our "pogo stick suspension design" as one of our group once put it. This phenomenon is a positive side benefit which becomes even more useful during low speed manouvering however does need more upper body motivation to utilize.
Hope that helps. But the bottom line is that if your going to utilize 2 1/2" coil over springs, and you've decided on camber plates to set your car up for more than grocery getting, then but the camber plates with maximum caster built it, because it costs the same and gives more benefits. Then just keep going from that point on as you desire because it seems just another piece of the puzzle between that grocery getter that could to the motion that is Kieth's rolling dyno, the Bronze or even Morton's BRE car which so many of us modeled our cars after.

Byron

[SteveEdmonton]

Thanks for the custom tutorial, Byron. As soon as you say it, it's obvious-- of course that's what adjustable T/C rods are for, giving more caster than the limited space in the strut tower will allow! It was just one of those things though. I knew I wasn't seeing the whole picture, but couldn't figure out quite what I was missing.

And thanks to everybody else who pitched in too (Keith, RTB, Jordan, James...). I'm a little surprised, but glad, that nobody just said, "Come on guy, do a search!" Your patience is much appreciated.

[bertvorgon]

You know what the kinda sad thing is.... we of course have to have all the adjustable stuff, to get the proper settings...then...at least in my case...when I found the sweat spot back in 1984...I have NOT TOUCHED my suspension settings since then, 30 years ago.

And now, with today's super sticky DOT street race tires, that my original settings work very, very well today, even more so than the setting I had for the Goodyear race slicks at the time. The rear of my car feels way better than when on slicks, and that is with a narrower tire, go figure.

Now, if we can only figure out how to get rid of that damn steering box......