How does camber angle affect wheel fitment?
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Team Driftworks
- Guides & Featured Products
- 27 Jun 2024
- Reading time: 4 minutes
Getting the correct wheel fitment with camber angle
This can be a huge minefield especially when you want to get millimetre perfect to your arch.
One way of tuning this relationship between the top of the wheel and the wheel arch is to alter the alignment of the wheels. Reducing the camber angle value of a wheel will pull the top edge in towards the car body, typically providing more clearance to the arch. It's quite normal for this camber angle setting (measured in degrees) to go into negative values.
You need to bear in mind that moving the wheel in this way also affects the inner lip by the same amount and sometimes this can cause issues with clearance to the car's inner body and suspension components.
It's a bit of a balancing act, and if you want big wide wheels and a fitment that's very flush to the wheel arches, you can expect to have to do a good bit of measuring and put some work in massaging the lips and edges of wheel arches, bumpers, and arch liners.
A perfect example of this is Driftworks employee Rich Starkey and his Nissan S15 who chose to go with some huge Work Emotion CR 3P Wheels (F: 18x9.5 ET-3 and R: 18x10.5 ET-29) which, with a little camber, sit perfectly to the arch.
Using wheel spacers
If the wheel is too narrow, a wheel spacer can be added to lower the total offset and bring the wheel further out. You would not normally see a positive camber angle used to get good wheel fitment. Adding Wheel Spacers can also be a great cost-effective way to make OEM wheels fit much better without the expense of buying new wheels.
Using adjustable suspension arms
There are different ways that toe, camber angle and castor can be adjusted depending on your specific car and its suspension layout. Many cars have adjustable bolts fitted to the suspension arms as standard which allow the alignment to be fine-tuned, but these only allow a certain range of adjustment and if you have lowered your car a significant amount it's quite common that the factory adjustment will not allow enough compensation to get a good alignment.
Here at Driftworks, we sell Adjustable Suspension Arms to allow further adjustment than the factory amount if you want to do something extreme.
On most cars with a double wishbone setup, the top suspension arm is below the top of the wheel, so small camber adjustments at the arm can move the position at the top of the wheel quite significantly, but there are a few specific oddities like the Nissan R32 Skyline front suspension where the pivot point of the knuckle is well above the wheel on the upper arm and with these there will be a less dramatic effect at the wheel.
Generally speaking, adding a small amount of camber will not negatively affect how the car drives overall. However, if you do start getting to 4 degrees and beyond, you may start to feel this in the vehicle.
We're here to give you the most up-to-date knowledge on frequently searched topics gained from years of first-hand experience modifying our cars. We'll always aim to give you the answers straight without adding over complicated, unnecessary detail.
