Does rear caster angle matter (much)?

[m4inbrain]

Hey there, currently scratchbuilding my first "sporty" (for cheap, just to see if i'm into it). The build went surprisingly well for a basically complete Aliexpress build so far, there's just one issue.

The suggested carrier bearing prevents the suspension from fully compressing (upper links hit the rod holding the carrier bearing), so i "designed" and printed myself an arched carrier bearing support. Works fine. But it now turns out that the rear driveshaft angle is a bit too steep to run smooth, so i rotated the rear axle forward a bit to get a reasonable angle there, looks like this.

Is it fine to run that angle on the rear? What's the potential downside? If i don't do this, i have to run a single driveshaft to the gearbox, quite severely limiting ground clearance.

Bit above my pay grade, i know that positive caster on the front axle is okay, i got no clue about the rear.

Thanks in advance.

 

[89Industries]

Non steering axle doesn't matter much or at all. Imagine that was a straight axle, rotating the pinion doesn't affect anything since it's a solid non-steering axle.

The portal will just apply a torque to the axle tube and try to twist it up but doesn't matter it's angle.

It more affects you suspension geometry (anti-squat and anti-rise) characteristics where if you are really into the mechanical design aspects you might need to adjust your links to get it how you want. But even then it's unlikely you'll notice.

 

[m4inbrain]

Thanks for the explanation, it does make sense when you put it that way, yeah.

Brilliant, off to cutting driveshafts to length i go.