Quote:
Originally Posted by AzNightmare
I'm playing devil's advocate here, but with better suspension and tuning, more aggressive camber, etc, does it really help you in the city, or on a race track? Or are people driving their car in the city, like they're on a race track?
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A proper suspension upgrade will make a night and day difference in every kind of emergency manoeuvre situation. Factory suspensions are almost always tuned for street comfort (and who can blame the manufacturers for this?), and it manages weight transfer during emergency manoeuvre rather poorly. In the simplest case of slamming on your brakes, a soft factory suspension will cause the weight transfer to happen too quickly. The rear end gets light too soon, too fast, and the chances of the rear end stepping out / wiggling becomes noticeably higher. Add to the fact that the overwhelming majority of drivers haven't got the slightest clue that maximum braking only occurs when your steering wheel is straight, and you have a recipe for spin out / side swipes / loss of vehicle control.
A properly tuned, performance grade suspension cannot replace driver skills, but it does vastly improve the driver's ability to control the vehicle under pretty much every imaginable driving situation.
Excessive camber will reduce longitudinal traction between the tires and the ground. In layman's terms, it will hurt your straight line acceleration and braking. From my personal experience, however, there is no observable degradation in acceleration / braking performance until you start approaching -2° camber. I'd even go as far as to say that up to -2.5° camber, the performance drop off is small. And yet I bet certain VPD officers will not be happy to see wheels cambered at -2°.
