Camber Tyres?

[MagicMikeZ32]

Came across this on one of the US z32 forums.

http://www.cambertire.com/technology/Default.aspx

Thoughts?

[GTSBoy]

Seems silly on the face of it. The whole point of camber is that when you apply significant cornering forces such that there is a force making the body roll out over the tyre, then the tyre wants to stand up. If the tyre initially has negative camber, then as it stands up it applies the tread face flat to the road, giving you the benefit of the full tread face generating grip (on the tyres on the outside.....the tyres on the inside of the car will of course have less contact patch, but they do a lot less of the work).

If the tyre has no neg camber, then as the car/suspension rolls, the tyre stands on its outside edge, giving you less contact patch on the heavily loaded outside tyres and you get reduced grip.

So, if the special camber tyre is built to be inclined inwards towards the top, yet still present a flat face on the road at static conditions, then there should be no difference between that case and the case where a normal tyre is set up with no camber at all. Load the special camber tyre up in a corner and it should stand up on its outside edge and offer reduced contact patch compared to a normal tyre that was installed at the same "camber" angle.

All the best trickery in this sort of context is in designing suspension systems that eliminate a such body roll as possible and therefore require less static camber, thus minimising the camber wear problem from driving a lot of camber in mostly straight lines. Add some caster into the mix and you have low static camber + enough dynamic camber to keep things working in corners.

This special camber tyre design seems to reek of being a solution to a problem that doesn't exist except in the lives of people who insist on running lots of camber because it looks cool.

I may have to back down from this position if serious evidence (not marketing material from the company) is available, but I wouldn't expect there to be heaps of that around.

[MagicMikeZ32]

I agree with your comments 100% actually

[niZmO_Man]

+2 same here, looks like the tyres are designed for the stance crowd. Actually on the limit these look like they might be worse (contact patch reduces a lot quicker as the car is "tipping" onto the edge of the tyre). Plus different shorter inner diameter compared to outer, wouldn't that cause the inner to wear out quicker?

[MagicMikeZ32]

The whole stance thing includes stretch tho. I don't see these stretching very well?

[colourclassic]

^So it has the same static footprint of a normal tyre, at a higher static camber angle...? This isn't going to change the effective footprint of the inner/outer tyres as the car goes through a corner, so what's the point? Wank?

Looking at it, the only way this could be marginally more effective would be if the car had no suspension at all, and thus these would offer a slightly wider track width while maintaining a full contact patch.

Edited September 30, 2013 by colourclassic