This article is part of a section of the RcTek site devoted to radio controlled model car handling. As car handling is an extremely complex subject, it will be quite some time before it is finished.
This article deals with the affect that toe angles have on Ackerman steering angles.
This article builds upon the Ackerman Steering Principle, which should be read or the principle be fully understood before continuing.
As stated at the top of all the articles in this section, model car handling is a complicated subject and relies to a great extent on interactions between different geometrical movements.
This article demonstrates one of the interactions between Ackerman Steering Angles and Toe Angles.
We have depicted the various different settings that could be applied to a model car in the below paragraphs, but what must be considered is the fact that toe angles can normally be set to any angle and so infinite variations of the below are possible.
We can only generalise with some of the drawings as the Ackerman angle is only fixed when True - the More or Less or less Ackerman angles are not fixed angles.
In this first example the car has it's front wheels Toed-in and the Ackerman angle is set to True.
When the wheels are turned they would finish up with both wheels being toed-in relative to the circumference of the circular path they were following.
In this second example the car has it's front wheels Toed-out and the Ackerman angle is set to True.
When the wheels are turned they would finish up with both wheels being toed-out relative to the circumference of the circular path they were following.
In this third example the car has it's front wheels Toed-in and the Ackerman angle is set to More.
When the wheels are turned they would finish up with the outside wheel being toed-in and the inside one parallel relative to the circumference of the circular path they were following.
As noted above the angle of the wheels is dependant on the amount of Ackerman angle and toe angle. The angles of the wheels in the diagram above left would only be correct if the toe angle matched that which the Ackerman geometry created.
In this fourth example the car has it's front wheels Toed-out and the Ackerman angle is set to More.
When the wheels are turned they would finish up with both wheels being toed-out relative to the circumference of the circular path they were following.
In this fifth example the car has it's front wheels Toed-in and the Ackerman angle is set to Less.
When the wheels are turned they would finish up with both wheels being toed-in relative to the circumference of the circular path they were following.
In this last example the car has it's front wheels Toed-out and the Ackerman angle is set to Less.
When the wheels are turned they would finish up with the outside wheel being toed-out and the inside one parallel relative to the circumference of the circular path they were following.
As noted above the angle of the wheels is dependant on the amount of Ackerman angle and toe angle. The angles of the wheels in the diagram above left would only be correct if the toe angle matched that which the Ackerman geometry created.
This article is an extension to the Ackerman Steering Principle article and you should now be better informed about the interaction between Toe Angles and Ackerman Angle.
As stated in the Ackerman article, there is another element in car handling that is particularly important to the model car owner. This element is called slip angle and will have a future article devoted to it.