Squat... Tell me what you think...

[Ken]

:L

Ok, I'll be serious...

I snapped this shot yesterday at LACR and the first WCCC event of 2003. It's a picture of John Nelson's car waiting in the staging lanes for his turn at the lights. I really didn't notice it at first and didn't think to ask him about it, but isn't the rear squat a little extreme for a fourth-generation Corvette?

What do you think? I've never seen a C4 squat like that. :confused

_ken

BTW, it is at rest, or rather, sitting still.

 

[Top]

Hmmmm.......Mine squats like that and I hadn't even thought that it wasn't normal. Tire wear is fine and even. Be interesting to see what everybody else says. I'll take a pic tomorrow and post it.

:bar

 

[vettepilot]

It looks like a lot of negative camber on the rear, he may have set it up that way, or his camber adjustment is loose and slipped.
He wasn't by any chance power braking it with the parking brake was he?
It really doesn't look like it's squatting that much, but then....
I might not know squat
I have waited a lifetime to use that line

vettepilot

 

[Ken]

Hence the title of this post. :L

No, he wasn't power-braking or anything. I can understand the benefit of negative camber on a road racer, but does it help traction any for drag racing?

_ken

 

[vettepilot]

I honestly don't know if it would help or not, I suppose if his trailing arm bushings are a little soft, then under hard acceleration the toe-in could increase, that would rotate the tire forward around it's vertical axis and cause the outside shoulder to make more contact than the inside. Negative camber would equalize the inside outside tire forces for straight line traction.
But I'm really reaching on that guess
VP

 

[vigman]

Hey that's not right

Looks like alignment time to me....




Vig!

 

[scorp508]

I can think of 3 things.


1. He needs a new wheel bearing.
2. He has his camber set that way for a reason.
3. He doesn't and he needs an alignment badly.

 

[tyrel]

I never thought that a camber bolt would come loose, but it happened to my car last year. Went out to take pictures of it and the back wheel looked exactly like the one in the picture above. Got under the car and what do you know, loose camber bolt. Took it in to re-align. I wonder how it got loose?

 

[Top]

An Update.

My toe adjustment assembly is bad, hence my passenger side tire 'lean in'. Rather than replace the assembly, I am going to get a heavy duty competition strut bar kit. This should stiffen the rear end and defintely won't hurt in my Silver State Classic preparations.

My question is: Has anybody had any bad experiences with replacing their strut rods with heavy duty ones? Thanks in advance.

ave

 

[evolution]

It seems that dragging with a neg camber like that would get you squirrley enough to put you to the rails.

 

[Ken]

I e-mailed John about it, and invited him here to see if he could explain why his Vette sits like that.

_ken