Hello,

my 1975 914 1.8L is having some suspension troubles. I recently installed new tires that were supposed to fit well (I forget now what size). On the passenger side, rear, the tire fits well in the wheel well; but it rubs on the fender on the driver's side rear.

This was quite a bummer, which I only solved by putting in that spot the spare tire, which luckily was narrower so it barely fit.

But my question is: when the car lays low, especially on one side only, is it expected that the problem is the strut, or the spring on that side? I don't want to put a lot of money in the repair, since I plan on selling this car fairly soon, so I don't want to replace the struts if not needed. Is there a good way to test? The car drives well and has no unusual suspension issues except for this asymmetry.

Thanks,
Andrei.

common problem, I had the same issue on the driver side with 60 series tires. you can roll the lip a little to help.

Just rolling the lip won't be enough, it rubs pretty good. It's clear that something is amiss with the suspension on that side; I'll fix it well, I'm not doing half-measure things. But I need to know if replacing just the springs will fix the car listing to one side, or do I need new struts too?

Well, what size tires, and what wheels?

Is it both front and back on one side ? Is it just front or just back?

Mine rubbed on my ‘71 until I got new springs and shocks. The old, origional springs were dead. Measure the height of your fender lip to the ground.

It’s probably not alignment if it’s that bad but could be a bent trailing arm from a hit.

often when its one side... it looks like the whole side is cocked over... but its really just one corner (doesn't always show)

certainly shocks might help
but if its really crooked... consider checking the front torsion bars
not an easy job, but that is your front spring. and torsion bars can actually break in half causing that corner to sit on the frame.

its also possible that just the adjuster screw for a front torsion is incredibly out of adjustment and causing a high or low setting when compared to stock

Sorry I was not clear about it. The front of the car is just fine, as is the passenger side rear. It all seems to be a problem only with the driver side rear. When I get home in a couple of hours I’ll report back on what size tires and wheels I have. But the fact that one fits quite well (passenger rear) but another doesn’t points out to me that something is not right.

if tire fitment is your only problem... the fenders always vary from right to left on the rear. They always have different amounts of space on right to left. you just have the wrong size of tires for your wheel or amount of space.

I took the original post to mean the car was actually sitting higher or lower on the corresponding sides.

if that is the case then you have a spring problem
some of the aftermarket rear springs have adjustable coil overs added to allow for correction. some of the stock springs (bilsteens/yellow) have 3 positions of adjustment on the spring perch of the rear shock. It could be yours are set into different settings?

or even possible to have a broken rear spring... but not likely

and a front broken torsion bar can affect the ride height of the opposite rear corner

The shocks have no bearing on how the car sits as they only work when the suspension is moving, the springs do however effect the ride height. If you find its not the wheel fitment you should replace the springs as a pair (idk if u can even just buy one) at the same time check the shocks to see if they still work, if they’re bad too replace those as a pair as well

and please do a 4 wheel alignment after you change any of these components

It is very common for there to be less tire room under one rear fender or the other. It is not consistent from car to car, but it seems that most 914s have some difference between the two.

If there is more interference than typical in your case, it could be a bunch of different things. Springs wearing unevenly, bushings worn out, suspension pickup points moved due to rust/accident/repair/PO work, fenders moved due to the same, bent trailing arm....

Heck, you could even have one wheel with a funky offset! Assuming they are non-stock wheels, that is.

--DD

OK, I went to the car and looked at it. The tires are Goodyear assurance P195/60R15. The rims that they are installed on (not the spare tire) are original equipment Riviera wheels. The spare tire is an old 165/15 tire on a steel rim; it fits OK in the rear passenger side wheel well, but the Goodyear tire does not.

I measured from the lip of the fender to the center of the wheel. On one side it is 10-5/8", while on the other it is 10" even (it's lower on the driver side, as expected).

I also tried to measure from the ground to the lip of the fender, but realized that this is not a smart measurement because it compares the different heights of the two different tires. Anyway, the two sides came equal from the ground to the lip of the fender (but the 165/15 tire is narrower and taller, so that probably explains it; with the same tires most likely the driver side would be sitting lower).

What do you guys think, should I just go ahead and try to replace the springs, and see if the struts are still OK?

One more strange thing: I also have another set of wheels, they are Pedrinis (also OEM) with Goodyear Assurance P195/65R15. (Note the 65 versus the 60 on the other rims.) The whole trouble started when I put on the Rivieras with the 195/60R15's; before, with the Pedrini 196/65R15's things were fine. This is odd, because I would have thought that the 196/65R15's would be slightly **bigger** than the 195/60R15's...

(Most) Riv's don't have the right offset for a 914. Also, there are two different offsets for Riv's so you might have one wheel of each. Even with the better offset size of the Riv's, you are still limited to tire width.
Pedrini's, Mahle's, Fuchs are all better choices.

The thing about shocks and springs is if you cant remember when or don't know when they were last replaced, it's probably time to replace.

Have the tires mounted on the Pedrinis. Sounds like the problem is the Riviera rims, which have a different offset than the rims that came stock on a 914. Your new tires mounted on the correct rim (Pedrini) should do the trick. Wanna check, just have one tire fitted to a Pedrini and put it on the problem corner of the car...

Riveria's are not original equipment! They are the wrong offset.

If you suspect it is the rims, swap from side to side, This will will eliminate the rim as the culprit. If the tires are directional, don't drive far with them on the wrong side

Too much tire for the rims. Common issue. Measure the distance from the back side of the wheel faces to the lip on both style of wheels and you'll see the problem.

Check the bushings on your trailing arm pivots, could be a worn bushing allowing the trailing arm to move towards fender. I had one that was allowing 1/2 inch of motion side to side.

The problem is the Riviera offset which places the tire further out than the stock Pedrini. The 195/65 and the 195/60 are basically the same width, 195 mm wide. The 65 and 60 indicate the aspect ratio, which is the height of the tire cross section relative to the tire width of 195 mm.

Great, I did not know the Pedrinis are offset farther out. I am going to go to a tire shop tomorrow and ask them to install one tire (only in that corner) which is 185/65/16. If it works, I'll switch out all the tires for 185's. But still uncertain, the difference between the 195's and 185 is only about 5mm (about 1/4")...

I forgot to say that I don't want to go to the Pedrinis on this car -- I like the look of the Pedrinis better and plan to keep them on the 914 that I just acquired (which came with the Rivieras) and which I am keeping. (I am now in the process of switching from one 914 to another -- the one I had before one will be sold.)