Hi all, i presume that my exige is set up correctly and i posted on here before about the car tramlining due to the camber of the road, which the majority said was normal. i thought id leave it and see how i got on with it (at the time i had moved from an S2 Elise), its due for a service soon so thought i’d get it more set up to my liking at the same time, however i could do with some advice as to what settings i should go for.
I dont track the car and it spends most of its life on bumpy, twisty ‘B’ roads. I think i might be right in saying that i will loose some of the high speed cornering at the cost of eliminating some of the tramlining would this be by having a little more toe in at the front? i just find some of the roads i drive soooooo bumpy the car feels like it gets thrown out of line and that i’m constantly battling to keep it straight, i now however have massive forearms from gripping the wheel so tight!
I dont know what castor is so if someone can also enlighten me i’d be grateful.
Thanks for your help/ suggestions
Tanman
I think you will find its the camber that tends to cause tramlinig. The less you have though, the less grip you will have at the front. I personally would stick with Lotus factory settings for the road. The wheel will always move around in your hands and to a certain extent you should let it, not when its tugging as you pull up to the lights in the grooves left by trucks but certainly on a A/B road as it constamntly “wriggles” in your hands. The steering in that respect is the same as a motorbike…your progress will be smoother if you let it move around a bit.
here is a good explanation of how our suspension works…
“The less you have though, the less grip you will have at the front”
you need to go into more detail about that as he will get confused.
the less you have the more grip you will have on the straights and for braking 
“The less you have though, the less grip you will have at the front”
you need to go into more detail about that as he will get confused.
the less you have the more grip you will have on the straights and for braking >
Correct, sorry about that. Here we go then…
When the wheel is vertical it has zero camber. This puts the tyre flat on the road in a straight line. So generally speaking this would give the most braking grip…and probably the least tramlinig.
When you enter a corner the tyre tends to get pulled under the wheel as the cornering forces act upon it.The result of this is that the outside of the tyre gets overworked and the inner side of the tyre gets underworked.
The solution to this is to give the wheel/tyre combination negative camber (thats when the top of the wheel/tyre is closer to the centreline of the vehicle than the bottom of the wheel/tyre). This will give more grip in the corners as the tyre remains flat to the road surface under the dynamic cornering condition. As Md06 correctly pointed out that gives a coresponding decrease in straight line grip (in this case we are discussing the front, so it would be a decrease in braking grip)
The more negative camber you run the more the car will tend to tramline. Hopefully thats a bit clearer now.
Thanks guys for the replies, i’ve read through the link which has given me more food for thought. i now need to find out what the current settings are with the garage and then go from there.
Thanks once again