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Originally Posted by sperry
But when you start with the chassis side of the control arm already below the knuckel, the situation only gets worse as you compress the suspension, rather than at least staying neutral for the first inch or two of compression.
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That's really not how it works, it doesn't stay neutral and then go bad. The wheel angle at any given point equals the chassis roll angle minus any camber gain. As soon as the car develops any lateral force at all, there is chassis roll, simple physics. A couple inches of suspension travel will typically work out to about 3 or 4* of chassis roll. If you have camber gain that's only in the neighborhood of -0.4* to -0.9* per inch of bump, which is typical for production car-layout struts, you can do the math and see that if you start out with a static camber angle of 0, the outside wheel will always be at a positive dynamic camber angle.
My main point is that dropping the ride height way down will affect the camber gain, because it changes the angle of the lower control arm, but the camber gain is so small to begin with relative to the chassis roll and static camber setting, that it is not the main determining factor in the dynamic camber you will have when the car is loaded up in the middle of a corner.
This is not to say that the handling will stay hunkey-dorey if you slam the car to the ground! Altering the LCA angle affects lots of other things like roll center height, front view swing arm length, jacking forces, & tire lateral scrub... which in my opinion at least is usually the reason why a strut car will handle poorly if it's lowered too much - not the change in camber gain. It's somewhat of a subtle technical point, I know... but I'm just trying to shed some light on the subject.