"Low Rider" option - let's figure this out

[twistedtree]

Perhaps we are obsessing a bit too much here, but if you go back to the original picture of the two cars, it would seem that one is pretty far out of whack.   But which one?  The low one or the high one?

[pagoden]

Stick -

I've been hoping I could get the handling characteristics I'm after with a rear camber around zero to -1 degree, so your post is good news, and not something I want to argue with.  But not having anything like 30 years with M-B cars, I take note of the M-B specs calling for one to two degrees of positive camber, and that being with ~ 286 pounds of passenger weight up as well as another nearly 90 pounds of trunk load.  Do you load your customers' cars while making that adjustment to -1 degree, and can you boil down for us how your years of experience have led you to use that one degree of negative rear camber?   [I've been thinking that I'd try dropping my rear setting from the 2+ degrees of positive (unladen) it has now to 0 or less, and then see if it was possible to set the front end down far enough to level the car and still be within the spec range up front.......is it?  BTW, I'm running 185 Vreds, so am starting from pretty high up all 'round.]     TIA

Denny

[stickandrudderman]

Denny, I apologise. That should read "positive" not "negative"! I'll go and change it.
The positive camber is a little counter-intuitive. Anyone who knows anything abouot chassis set up knows that we want negative camber in order to maximise grip in roll. (I don't want to go into too much detail here otherwise it'll contradict what I said about getting hung up on too much detail!) except that in this case we have the infamous swing axle arrangement.
Now, unlike most conventional suspension set-ups of the modern era, the camber change in compression on these cars is relatively large so (I presume, this is not from any text book) that the object of having positive camber in the neutral or unloaded position is that we get something like zero or even a negative in compression. Again, I have no data for this but for 99.99% of owners it's completely irrelevant. For my purposes I aim for somewhere between 0° and +1° camber without any additional weight in the car and focus mainly on ride height. If I had a customer who was using his car on the track I might pay more attention to the camber but it hasn't happened yet.
This, by the way, is exactly why the 300SL had such a fearsome reputation for oversteer. As long as the driver keeps the power on when cornering then the rear of the car "squats" and so has negative camber (more grip). However, the moment he lifts off the throttle mid corner (because the storage devices given to him for vital ingredients of procreation are of insufficient diameter for example) the suspension becomes unloaded and so switches from negative to positive camber and he loses all grip on the rear. Incompetent Porsche drivers on track days are a delight to watch for a similar reason but that's another subject!