legacycentral bbs

Why is it that cars with wishbone or multilink suspensions had *edit- have* static negative camber?

they don't. they just come closer to it. If you think of a pure swing axle, parallel to the line connecting the wheels, the camber will change greatly when the suspension is compressed, icreasing negative camber but then resulting in positive camber pretty quickly, and resulting instability (the wheel wants to fold under)

With a double wishbone, two parallel arms hold the hub axis reasonably vertical, so the camber angle changes much less for the same deflection.

With multilink many things are possible, you could even make the camber increase if you wanted to, but it won't be perfectly static.

lemme make sure that you and i are talking about the same thing- I'm referring to the tires leaning inward when the car is unloaded and at rest. Specifically the rears, since many cars appear to have no camber in the front, using the steering to add camber. The reason i ask is because with unequal length wishbones or multilink, it can be set up so that there is 0 camber at stock ride height, yet manufacturers don't seem to do this, and so im wondering what benefit it had by it.

Steering isn't used to add camber. Castor is used to add dynamic camber (turn the wheels, + camber. That's Dynamic camber, and is a product of Castor settings rather than steering setups. A set of Camber/Castor plates like I have will allow you to do this).

For rear suspensions, a macpherson strut setup with lateral links and a trailing arm, camber goes negative under travel. Good for saftey, because a Macpherson strut front end with a control arm goes positive under compression. Understeer.

With double wishbone rear suspension, camber stays relatively static, because wheel travel is vertical rather than arc'd around a center point like with a lateral link and trailing arm setup.

So, to answer your question. The suspension does not allow camber to go to far negative, as wishbone suspension allows relatively static camber settings. GREAT, because suspension action is very predictable, and can be tuned as such.

So why they DON'T keep it at 0 degrees, camber, is that you want to engineer UNDERSTEER into a system rather than oversteer. 1.75 degrees of static rear camber, and only have a degree or so of castor, you can have a decently wearing tire setup, with the ability to still understeer at the extremes, but track really well throughout the suspensions movement.

I can't name a current vehicle on the road with a macpherson front suspension with a lower control arm, and a double wishbone rear suspension.

With Multilink, anything can be setup really, so that's reasonable to have a multilink on the back with a macpherson setup up front.