Alignment settings, aggresive street driven car Options

[Aaron Cox]

hey guys.... ill need to get my car aligned tommorow after new tierods etc.
what settings should i have the alignment guy aim for?

camber?
caster?
Toe in?


this will be mucho helpful.
streeter driven hard and aggresive (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif)

[tesserra]

Check out the PCA website. Class B cars have great alignment settings for street/agressive driving.
If you are going to a normal alignment shop I would lower the front end to the height you want before you go there, as the camber changes with ride height.
The web site is PCAGGR.org

good luck
George

[thesey914]

Hmm couldn't get PCAGGR.org link to work. I've looked on the PCA site do i need the rulebook PDF? (wasn't working when I tried)

[brant]

I'm going to get an alignment on a street car soon..
What numbers did you end up going with...

what are some the recommendations out there for a good compromise.

brant

[reverie]

This data is from a previous 914club thread:

Alignment specs for "aggressive/high-performance street"..
these specs are set up with the driver's weight in the driver’s seat:

FRONT (left, right): caster: (5.4, 5.8)
camber: (-1.1, -1.1)
toe: (1/16", 1/16").

REAR: camber: (-.9, -.9)
toe: (1/16", 1/16")
thrust: 0

Secondary Angles: SAI: (11.1, 11.9)
IA: (10.0, 10.8)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

[Dave_Darling]

I'd go with more negative camber in the rear, probably about a half-degree more.

But then again, this is all just hand-waving until you tell us about your setup. And remember, there was more than one "stock" setup! (E.g., sway bars or no. Plus the 100 lb/in "stock" springs, which are stiffer than the actual stock springs which seem to have been from 65 to 90 lb/in.)

--DD

[brant]

thats fair dave,

I always thought the rear was supposed to have about 1/2 more Negative (how is that for a double negative) than the front... ?

this is a street car I've set up with spare part parts that I had after stealing all of the race hardware off of the chassis for the new race car... Set up is:

rear:
140# springs, double zerked, custom honed (well fit) rear hard poly bushings, and bilsteen yellow shocks

front:
19mm 911 bars and A-arms, zerked front poly bushings with a good fit, 22mm welt front bar, and boge turbo gas shocks

I'll be running 225/50/15 victoracers on a 7inch cookie cutter rim when it sees the occasional track day.

so what do you all think about...
same toe IN front and rear and 1- in the front about 1.5- in the rear?

brant

[Brett W]

If you drive it like you stole:

1/16 toe out in the front
-2 deg camber
6+ deg of caster or as much as you can possibly get

Rear:

ZERO toe in the rear
as much negative camber as you can get and still have it equal on both sides.

Do your best to get these settings as close as possible. Stand over the alignment guys and make sure they get the alignment to your perfect specs. I ended up doing the alignment myself and the tire guy just operated his machine. I had to grind the rear mounts to get the toe right. If you drive the car like a man you will have very even wear all the way across the tires.

[brant]

Brett,

question....
I had always thought for a street set up it was TOE IN for the front... am I remembering wrong.. Is TOE OUT the correct way to go...

brant

p.s. I'm real lucky with my access to an alignment shop.. The local shop I've used for 10 years knows all cars and definitely 914s. They set up cobras, ferraris, and bugattis.. The owner pits at monetery sometimes...

and if anybody knows Dave and Ellen Ferguson, This shop used to be his sponsor and do all the set up on his 914/6 (including the year that Ellen took 2nd at SCCA nationals)... this being back in the day when Dave was a colorado resident.. Dave, actually was the 1st person to encourage me to get on to a track for DE and he gave me a used set of tires to try it with..

[Brett W]

Yes TOE out. you will flip at how awesome the car turns in. Don't go anymore than that or you will cause tire wear problems. Toe out can make for a little twitchy handling but you will love it. it will tend to grab grooves in the pavement if you run too much though. The large amount if caster will help stabilize the car alot. what size tires are you running? THis is a street car right?



If this guys know Dave then he can definitely hook you up. Make sure he sets them the same side to side. Dave knows 914s so I am pretty sure this shop can do the work right, but I would still look over their shoulder.

[airsix]

Toe-out in the front will make the car very twitchy on the street and even a little scary on the highway, especially if you have rutted roads and wide tires. I run neutral toe up front and it's still a little twitchy at high speed on the highway. I don't like toe-out on the highway at all. Very responsive but very unstable. I would run toe-out on a track-only 914, but not a street car.

I think everyone should have a little toe-in in the rear. Why? Becuase under braking the bushings flex and the trailing arms flex, and you end up with much less toe-in than at static. If you have neutral toe at static then you will have rear toe-out under braking and that makes the back end walk all over the place. Driving a car that has rear toe-out is like flying a taildragger. You really have to stay on top of it or the back-end will be out in front of you before you know it. If you are running Mueller bearings you might be fine with neutral toe in the rear, but with the sloppy rubber bushings I would run a little toe-in. JMHO.

-Ben M.

[Dave_Darling]

I have found that, with toe-out in the front, I have to drive the car every second. I my attention wanders, most of the time the car wanders too! However, the initial turn-in is indeed better. It's a trade-off, and one that I would not recommend for a car that is primarily a street car.

And the combination of toe-out with negative camber will indeed tend to eat up the inside edges of your tires. Killed a set in my old 1.8 that way, pretty quickly too!!

Brant, with your setup I think going with fairly even camber all the way around will work better than my "default" of putting a half-degree more negative camber in the back. You have a lot of front roll stiffness (especially assuming your "911 bars" are thicker than stock 914 ones) and that will tend to make the car understeer more. More front negative camber will help tone that down and even out the handling.

I'd say you probably have a pretty decent alignment for the street. If you drive very aggressively, you will want a bit more negative camber. On the track, you will pretty definitely want more negative camber.

It sounds like you trust your alignment shop, and they have 914 experience. In that case, I'd go with what they recommend. Just make sure they know what the intended application is and how aggressively you are going to drive the car. (I know more than one person who hated their 914's handling because they got a "race" alignment and didn't drive the car hard enough to need one.)

--DD

[Scott Carlberg]

Hmm couldn't get PCAGGR.org link to work. I've looked on the PCA site do i need the rulebook PDF? (wasn't working when I tried)

you're missing a - (dash)


try pca-ggr.org



Scott

[Brett W]

brant
I drove my car this way for two years everyday. I had no radio to mess with no distractions the car was a drivers car. You didn't do anything else. You concentrated on the task at hand. I drove the car on many 4+ hour trips without a single problem. I never had an inner tire wear problem. I did smoke a set of Dunlop SP8000s in less than 10k miles but I was driving hard, I mean really hard. The tires were worn perfectly even all the way across the tread face. I was running a 225-50-15. The car was not that twitchy with only a 1/16 and you will not wear tires out. I was running -2 degrees in the front with 5.5 deg caster and -1.5 in the rear. The car was stable and predictable. I was so ha[ppy to be going somewhere in my car. Too bad I killed it. Due to hard cold worn out tires.