Height Adjustment & Travel, Why parallel? Options

[Joseph Mills]

My 914 goes to the shop next week for alignment: 1.5 to 2 degrees neg camber front, 2 to 2.5 neg rear with 1/16" toe-out front, 1/16" toe-in rear. Tires are Hoosier A3S03's.

I have found a few posts that seem to indicate that when the A-arms and trailing arms are parallel to the ground, you have maximized your cars height. Is this in fact, correct?

If so, why is this level preferred? If you go below this height is suspension geometry adversely effected? How much wheel travel is left at this point?

Joseph
'75 914 2.0L AX bound

[J P Stein]

Ben:

Caster.

When the car is going straight ahead the camber would decrease as the suspension compressed....under the conditions you describe....who cares? No harm, no foul.

As the tire is turned at an angle....during cornering, caster comes into play. Camber loss is negated by caster. I agree that ideally the A arm should never go above horizontal, but all is not lost should that happen.

Our little shitboxes have loads of caster built in......unlike other shitboxes.The stock
caster spec is 6 deg.....the axles lead the top strut mount by that much. Were one able to turn the tire 90 deg....thank God we can't....you would get 6 deg negative camber on the outside tire and 6 deg positive on the inside tire.

At max turn, my eyeball says 20 deg deflection from straight on the outside tire. That would be about -2 deg camber...if my in the head math serves. + 2 on the inside tire.....but it's not going to be compressed....ta da. This works regardless of body roll, but we Ricky Racers are controlling the shit outta that, nohow. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ar15.gif)