Too much front Camber ? Options

[Olympic 914]

This winter I installed Koni Adj strut inserts in the front, and just left the alignment settings where they were at.

I borrowed a buddy's Camber/Caster gauge and decided to fine tune things today.

Started out putting 185lbs in the drivers seat. (my weight) and then set the ride height all around. putting the front A-arms at level.

Then went about checking the Camber. on the front they were only slightly different, So I set them both at -3 deg camber. Caster seemed OK at 6 deg. so I left it there.

Rear camber is -2.5 deg (2. 30min?) on the right and -2.62 (2.37min) left. I really don't want to mess with this.

It seems to handle pretty good. Is that too much front camber for a street car? I'm not really too worried about tire wear.

[fiacra]

I don't know if this is of any help to you, but here are the numbers for my most recent alignment on my 1975 1.8, done after replacing the trailing arm bushings. These are the settings they told me were the best for street driving. This is a shop that is experienced in aligning 914s. I questioned this as to me the rear wheels look like they have too much negative camber and they certainly aren't the numbers you'll find in the shop manual, but I confirmed that is what they wanted and I had another shop check it out and confirm they felt it was correct. It drives fine and I'm also not worried about tire wear as they will age out before I get even close to wearing them out. You're going to get lots of different opinions on this, as I found out...

[dr914@autoatlanta.com]

3 degrees neg in the front is outrageous, besides hard steering slow cumbersome turn in, like you said the tires will wear out., There is NO benefit what so ever setting the camber that neg. zero is standard, 1/2 a degree if racing

This winter I installed Koni Adj strut inserts in the front, and just left the alignment settings where they were at.

I borrowed a buddy's Camber/Caster gauge and decided to fine tune things today.

Started out putting 185lbs in the drivers seat. (my weight) and then set the ride height all around. putting the front A-arms at level.

Then went about checking the Camber. on the front they were only slightly different, So I set them both at -3 deg camber. Caster seemed OK at 6 deg. so I left it there.

Rear camber is -2.5 deg (2. 30min?) on the right and -2.62 (2.37min) left. I really don't want to mess with this.

It seems to handle pretty good. Is that too much front camber for a street car? I'm not really too worried about tire wear.

[Dave_Darling]

For spirited street driving, I prefer about 0.5 degrees negative camber (both sides!) in the front, and about 1.0 degrees (negative) in the rear. This gives you a bit more grip in the corners and doesn't put a ton of extra wear on the tires or give up that much traction for braking or acceleration.

-3 up front is a lot. Like, an awful lot. Having more negative up front than the rear is also the opposite of the usual trend.

It is possible for those kinds of numbers to be "correct" in some instances, but usually those are for people with modified-enough cars and enough high performance/track driving experience that they are not likely to be asking this kind of question...

--DD