Alignment settings for 914/6, Should I use the factory settings... Options

[ken914]

I am having turbo tie rods put on my 914/6 tomorrow so I will need to get it aligned afterwards. What are the best settings for it? Should I go with the original factory settings or have things changed??

The car is a 914/6, not lowered, with flares and 7 and 8 x 15 rims.

Any advice (good advice) is appreciated.

Thanks.

Ken

[DonTraver]

I stayed with the original settings. I use the 6 mostly on the street, with some track time. She drives great on both, good steering responce, good tire wear, both street tires and Kumho's for the track.

If you can find someone that does the 4 wheel laser alignment, go for that, costs a bit more, but what a major difference it made on my car.

I was taking corners almost twice as fast as I had before on street tires, with a tire rating of 420, goodyear 50K tires that came with the car.

Good luck, Don

[ken914]

Don,

Thanks for your help. Sounds like good advice!

Ken

[Dave_Darling]

How do you drive your Six? If you don't drive it very aggressively, the stock alignment settings will be just fine.

The more aggressively you drive, the more aggressive the alignment should be--the more negative camber you should have. Otherwise you'll be wearing out the outer shoulders of the tires... And the car won't grip as well as it can.

Stock camber == 0 F ; -1/2 degree R (both + or - a quarter-degree or so)
Stock caster == ~6 degrees
Stock toe == "a little bit of toe-in" both F and R

Aggressive camber == -1 degree F ; -1 1/2 degrees R
Leave caster and toe angles stock.

You can also fiddle with the toe angles, but I don't recommend this with a car that is primarily a street car. The car will get quite "twitchy" and a bit unstable and will try to wander all over the road.

For an autoXer, you want even more negative camber (usually), and you do want toe-out in the front. But it doesn't sound like that's how this car is being used.

--DD