Well, I'm closing in on the finish of the 5 lug conversion on YellowDog and am now ready to familiarize myself with the wonderful world of 914 'venting clearance'. I seem to remember some saying that the figure in the Haynes manual is not correct. What should it be?

The venting clearence for the rear brake pads is .008 thousanths.

I know there's a bunch of people who think that 0.004" or so
is a good number to use. Setting the rear clearance too high
seems to make a huge dead spot in the brake pedal that is
very annoying.

Here's what I do. Trying to use a tool to measure the clearance,
unless rotors and pads are new, isn't ideal because you have
a groovy surface. I have the wheel off the ground, and turn
the adjusters until I feel resistance to wheel movement by
hand, then back off the slightest amount possible. I figure if
it's too tight (by a very small amount if any) it would wear itself
back to normal. I get a very good pedal feel at least for a few
weeks or one autocross.

I hate to disagree with you, Rich, but they told us at Porsche school that the manual was wrong, and to set it at .004". I think all the other references cite that original wrong figure. The Cap'n

Stop it Krusty... it's hard enough to get Rich to post

They should dig the guy up that invented the venting clearance caliper and slap him....

Well, I set it at .004 and it seems to be fine. I did a tentative drive around the block and all seems to be O.K. after all the 5 lug conversion stuff was bolted on. The whole project really went well, with no surprises and only one brake line fitting stripped (not by me, but by the guy who was 'helping'). No big deal I had extra ones and 20 min. latter all was well. Unfortunately it all came together too late to get it to the alignment shop, so no Auto-x tomorrow. (They'll run anyway, but I'm too old for this cold and wet crap!) Just as well, it's 46F and a light rain is falling, tomorrow is supposed to be worse. Our club has another one scheduled for next week-end and it should (hopefully) be fully sorted by then.

I would go with .004, because i just finished setting mine to the suggested .008 and I had to go back and tighten it some more. Still, my handbrake doesn't really do what it is supposed to. It will keep the car from moving from a stand still, but it does a poor job of slowing the car down.