suspension & wheel alignment

[Skygrasper550]

I have a question regarding the thread title.

alignment angle of wheels relative to when you're looking top down: toe
alignment angle of wheels relative to when you're looking at the front/rear at level ground: camber
alignment angle of suspension relative to when you're looking at the sides at level ground: caster
alignment angle of suspension relative to when you're looking at the front/rear at level ground: ???

someone care to fill in on the question marks? Plus, is it even possible to adjust those freely, like you would do with the other suspension components (springs, dampers etc.)? Or is the angle fixed, and cannot be adjusted as freely?

 

[Keef]

Looking at the front (because it only applies to the front), the vertical axis around which the wheel turns left and right is called either the steering axis inclination angle or kingpin inclination angle. This is a compound angle made up of the caster angle and the left-to-right difference between the lower rotation point (lower ball joint) and upper rotation point (upper ball joint on double wishbone cars or upper strut bearing/pillowball bearing on McPherson strut cars). Typically that angle leans inward toward the center of the car (the orientation in which it is measured) and backwards toward the rear of the car.

Hopefully somebody can find some more detailed illustrations of the various angles. There are a bunch of others that contribute to the geometry also.

 

[Pupik]

As Keef said, SAI (or thrust angle) sounds like what you are talking about.

 

[Eric.]

Sounds like your last ??? is still just camber. With coilovers and camber plates I can adjust camber at the lower strut mount (only moving the wheel hub assembly in relation to everything else), or lean the whole strut assembly in or out. Both adjusts camber.