What does it usually meam when you have a little stack of camber shims on the right side and none on the left? Could this be the cause of my shimmy that I can't eliminate?
Mike

Likely Hell hole sag.

How should I check this?

There are several possible reasons why the two sides are different, one of which is chassis rot as Gary mentioned.
It probably has nothing to do with your shimmy.
You need to do a careful inspection of your suspension & the mounting points on the chassis, as well as checking the alignment.

Another possibility is that the car was in an accident and the tub was tweaked.
Before my car was pulled back straight on a celette bench, i had to use a handful of shims to align the rear.

Sir Andy...that's what I was thinking and hoping!!!
Chris...pm sent.

Found the thread of my car getting pulled on the celette bench:
http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=52631


Got shims?

Yikes....that's alot of shims....

I ran into this last month. We were working on Al Garcia's (Als914) 914. I think it's a 73 but I do know that Al is the original owner. It came out of the factory that way. He did mention that they could never get it aligned before. Hmmmm, wonder why? Hey Andy; did the Porsche/VW plant vending machines have beer like the Polish factories have.

I had the same issue, take a look at my signature and you will see why I had 5 shims on one side and no shims on the other. Go to the bottom of page 14.

Vending machines? No, the beer in German factories is delivered by the case, they don't bother stacking the bottles in vending machines.


Useless trivia: In most unionized factories the availability of beer during your breaks is actually written into the union contract.

James...don't think that is the case with mine...at least I hope not. No signs of rust and the door gap is perfect. The car jacks beautifully using the factory jack point.
Mike

Many times, things happen to cars between the factory and the 1st owner. My friend worked at a Mercedes dealer, fixing those things. You would never know just looking at the car the amount of damage sustained. I remember working at a car dealer, washing cars when I was young. One of the older kids side swiped a car leaving the bay. Next week it was on the lot as good as new. Sometimes, new cars were on their 3rd, "1st owner", for all kinds of reasons. It happens...

I agree...and considering the car is almost 40 years old, it could have had any number of collisions.
Mike

Another significant possibility is that one of the trailing arms is tweaked.

--DD

Good thought Dave. What's the inspection procedure?
Mike

Even newer Porsche's have the same issue. In the early 1990's I worked by the airport in Charleston,SC. All the new Porsche's were delivered there for distribution. An acquaintance of mine (Darryl B) did a lot of work on the cars that were damaged in transit. Usually busted windows and paintwork. One time a car had a small electrical fire and they had to replace the whole interior!

Just imagine the owners of those cars now when they put a gauge on these things and find out their original paint is a repaint!

The procedure in the factory manual is to clamp it in a vise and measure the bearing bore versus the pivot. There are specific measurements to meet. I believe the pic from the factory manual is shown in Haynes.

--DD

Thanks...sounds like that's a little beyond my capabilities....

The 70' I have under cover in the driveway has a similar issue. Previous owners (multiple I think) kept repairing rust with sheet-metal screws and junk yard torch-welding. I believe the heat, improper thickness plates and pure stupidity created the current situation.

No problem, some day, Restoration Design will be able to retire on my replacement order - also guaranteeing that the whole chassis is new and in need of "Cellette Therapy"

Funny,

I worked over in Munich for a few years at Siemens running a division.
I did not go to the cafeteria for several months.

When I did, I found a tap in the cafeteria line, asked a few questions and found out that 2 liters of beer at lunch was written into the contract for all my employees.

At that point it all started to make sense and we moved all the technical meetings to before lunch, and all the creative and general meetings to after lunch.

Between that, the 6 weeks of paid vacation, 36 paid holidays, its a wonder we got anything done.


rich

Siemens Erlangen was identical. I told my team members that the taps wer "Verbotten". I subsidized their Munich & Oktoberfest trips instead. Got more work done, Training was successful and I saved money in the long run...

My 76 has 3 on the driver's side and 4 on the pass side. Both measure at .7 degree negative camber. The shims measure out to be 0.360 " driver's side and 0.400" pass side.
Tom

That sounds about right.

After my car was pulled straight on the celette bench i had about -2 deg of camber without any shims.

After I finished my last restoration I couldn't get enough shims to align the rear passenger side.(I think I had 5 or 6 in there but my bolts weren't long enough to be safe) I took the trailing arm off and looked real close at it. It appeared to have a bit of a twist in it as if it hit a curb real hard or was hit from the side. I couldn't tell by looking at it alone (as I had sandblasted it down and refinished it and didn't notice then) but I took a spare trailing arm and compared the two and found they were slightly different. I fit the new one into place and only needed one shim to align it.