Why do some people tilt their car's rear wheels in or outwards?

Question

I've seen cars (like VW beetles) with the bottom of their rear tires tilted inward or outwards. What is the purpose of this? I've also seen Hondas & other cars like this too.

Answer 1

i assume you are explaining an off camber situation. kind of like /car\ there the slash(/) symbolizes the tire this is a side effect of lowering the vehicle. if you walked up to the car most likely you would see that their tires are not wearing evenly.

basically they lowered their car by putting in shorter springs or cutting them without making other necessary corrections.

odd that you saw it on a VW

Answer 2

Only Vehicles with independent rear suspension can do this for a normal road car there is no benefit other than waring the rear tyres, lowering this type of car at the rear will cause the wheels to lean inward at the top

Answer 3

You get better acceleration (weight shifts to the back wheels giving them more traction) and better handling with a rear-wheel drive vehicle (in front-drive cars the tires have to accelerate and also turn the car, it is a lot of work for just two tires). Front-wheel drive vehicles will get a little better fuel economy because they don't have to spin a driveshaft to power the rear wheels. Usually economy cars and family sedans are front-drive while sports and muscle cars are rear-drive. Thats it!

Answer 4

The condition you're describing is called "negative camber."

Consider a car with no camber; that is, the tire is perfectly vertical, with no lean. As it rolls down the street, the entire width of the tread (from inside to outside) is on the ground, so the tire wears evenly. Unfortunately, when you go into a turn quickly, the tire leans onto the outside edge of the tread; just when you need all the traction you can get, you're reducing your contact patch! So, putting some negative camber into the appropriate wheels keeps more of the tread on the ground in turns -- but sacrifices even tread wear across the width of the tire when driving straight.

There are many reasons why a car might have negative camber, but chances are good that if a car on the street has so much negative camber that you can see it with the naked eye, it's for a bad reason.

Good reasons to have negative camber:

1. Because almost every car on the road has a little negative camber dialed in, or

2. Because you're driving a race-tuned car on the street, or

3. Because you're driving a race car on a racetrack.

A small amount of negative camber is used to great effect on most street cars. Since cornering speeds are low, suspension settings are tuned to give you safe handling and long tire life. A small amount of negative camber keeps the tread on the ground when going straight, but also keeps a bit more tread on the ground in turns.

If you have a Honda NSX, or one of many other high-performance race-tuned street cars, you'll have more negative camber. This gets you better handling on high-speed turns (the kind you never encounter on the street unless you're about to crash) at the expense of poor straight-line tracking and rapid, uneven tire wear. They set the cars up this way because the people who buy those cars either take them to the racetrack on occasion for non-competitive fun (rare), or because the people who want them use the high-falutin' skidpad numbers and "gee this car handles great on a racetrack!" car reviews as a point of pride.

At the other end of the spectrum are race cars, which are tuned with different camber settings on each wheel to improve their handling for a specific racetrack. Race cars spend most of their time in turns, so tire wear isn't an issue in the straights -- and in fact the proper camber settings will actually keep the tires from wearing out prematurely.

Bad reasons to have negative camber:

1. Because you think it helps your handling, but you're ignorant.

Car manufacturers spend an exorbitant amount of money making sure suspensions are set up to balance handling and tire wear; if you crank in a little negative camber, you might -- MIGHT -- get a little handling improvement, but only at autocrosses or on the track. Adjusting tire pressures properly will get you a much greater handling gain, and won't negatively impact tire wear as with gobs of negative camber.

Still, there are people out there -- you know who you are! -- who purposefully kick their camber several degrees to the negative, and genuinely believe it helps their handling to a noticeable degree. Meanwhile, they go through a set of tires every 5,000 miles, and every time they hit a bump or groove in the road, their steering wheel pulls out of their hands. Lame, really.

2. You have made a mistake while lowering your suspension, or
3. Your suspension cannot be adjusted to compensate for the out-of-whack camber when you lower it, or
4. You can't lower your car without the tire tops hitting the fender, so you kick the camber negative to clear the fender lip.

All three of these scenarios guarantee an ill-handling car, but at least it's not an ignorant decision -- at least not directly. Still, the person in #2 should get his/her suspension looked at, the person in #3 should raise the car back up or get suspension parts that allow the adjustment, and the person in #4 should get slightly narrower tires. Odds are it's a budget thing; the person in #2 did the mods themselves and doesn't know how the fix it, and #3 and #4 are too cheap or too broke to do the right thing.

5. the car has worn rear suspension bushings.

Now we get to the "classic car" case: the original VW beetles (and similar) with swing axles. Swing axle suspensions are primitive -- for simplicity, picture a stick with a wheel on each end and a hinge in the middle. Wheel goes up, camber goes negavite; wheel goes down, camber goes positive. It makes for terrible handling in bumpy turns, and only looks proper when the car is balanced properly. Sagging rear suspension parts in these cars commonly make the car look like it's squatting, and the camber looks very, very negative -- because it is.

Answer 5

when the wheels are tilted (bottom outwards), it is to prevent rolling over during high speed truning. tilting the wheels inward helps in doing stunts like making the car go 2 wheels.

Answer 6

alot of people wrote long answers that went to the "WHAT" is wrong with these cars but your question was "WHY" are they this way and the answer is simply one of 3 things -1.they are CHEAP SKATES 2. They were or are uninformed about the alignment 3. they bought it that way - those 3 will cover 99% of the poor lowering jobs out there

Answer 7

For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/axECG

FWD Pro - More efficient than RWD (even with the same engine) - Better traction in snow Cons - Under steer - Torque steer RWD Pro - Handles better (except in the snow) - No torque steer Cons - Not so good in the snow (modern traction control has greatly improved this almost to the level of FWD) - Takes up more interior room If you want sporty you go RWD. If you want something to get from here to there go FWD.

Answer 8

Improper suspension modifications; Usually to lower the vehicle. It's called Camber.

Answer 9

It's b/c the wheels are badly out of alignment. Probably b/c the car has been lowered and wasn't aligned afterward.