Good morning. There is a bright orange yellow orb in the sky over Southern California right now. Quite welcome to see it, but I digress.

The 1974 Arizona car has uneven tire to fender clearance from side to side. The tires are the same make and size, it has the same rims on it, but I have about one fingers worth of clearance on the driver side to the tire wall but basically none on the passenger side.

I don’t have a history on the car but the tub is straight and does not evidence any accidents. I haven’t put the car up on a rack to check the alignment but it doesn’t look like the rear camber is noticeably different from side to side.

Any ideas to share? Thanks!

Typical, between camber differences and incorrect offset tires, (many stick out emphasizing the fender differences, and the fact that the bodies vary since they are made by vw, it is not uncommon to see one tire closer than another, usually the right one is closer than the left

Phew!

Thanks Doc, er George! Have a great weekend

maybe something to check, since car history is not available, is see if the fenders were adjusted for wider tires at some point. I installed wider track tires on my car and had to use a broom stick handle to gain some room. I just rolled the handle between the tire and fender to roll the inner lip up. maybe this was done on one or both sides?

Yes, probably more typical than finding one that's perfect side to side

Usually the drivers side rear is tighter than the passenger side

While there may be small variations from the factory, a whole finger width is concerning.

A few things to check:

- Make sure the fenders aren't dented
- Make sure the inside fender lips are the same, one could be rolled while the other isn't
- The alignment could be off from side to side. Check the camber on each side.
- Trailing arm bushings shot
- The trailing arm(s) could be bent. Seen this before. Check for unequal amounts of alignment shims side to side.
- Rust in the suspension console or cracked suspension console, both of which will allow the trailing arm to move around.
- Bent wheel, loose lug nuts or lose wheel bearing

Mine have been opposite,,pass side tight..

Thanks for all of the responses, including @SirAndy who replied on my duplicate post.

The driver side fender has been rolled, I don’t think the passenger side has. Let me double check that and then get the car up in the air and see what I find. I was going to rebuild the front and rear suspension on this car anyway so thanks to whatever ones posted I will lower my heart rate and chill out until all that is done.

If I still have an issue after all of that then I reserve the right to freak out, ha.

Thanks again for all of the great information and fast response

and I bet that you have aftermarket wheels on you car like empi or riviera

One thing that is not mentioned is worn trailing arm bushings.

Usually they wear most on the drivers side.

Check for this by jacking the car up...grab the (rear) wheel at the 3 and 9 oclock position and check for play.

I just shot the rear body on my v8 car and the numbers are close to the same without the rear suspension being in the body. Now this car had 7 on it before and someone flattened the area so the tire would not scrape. Not sure if this helps but it was close by and easy for me to do.


Bob B
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Yep - American Racing


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Interesting way of strapping down your vehicle.

yup, vw beetle offset would fit perfectly on a car with add on fenders

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Hi. Windshield and targa top wete only loose fitted, the gentleman who delivered it was very diligent (and this my be after some of the straps were removed.

Had a feeling there might be a reason.

This is how I pictured the front of your house in my mind's eye.

BTDT..now in the back 1/2 acre..
Wife in the front,, Party in the back...

Wish I had that space.

I just give rides to people and go out of my way to be helpful to my neighbors.

I know I'm a little late on this, but one more data point...

On my 1972 car with the same wheels (American Racing Le Mans) and 165-15 Vredestein tires, there is roughly 5/8 inch fender clearance on the driver's side and less than 1/4 inch fender clearance on the passenger side. Camber is the same on both sides. It's been like that since new.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the info and getting us back on topic. Seems to me quite common.

Did these wheels come in different offset but same look? That could explain it too. This car, which I am happy with and had a great experience dealing with the seller I hasten to add, is a mishmash so it wouldn’t surprise me.

While I've heard that these wheels had different sizes and offsets, most seem to be for VW Bugs in late 1960s-early 1970s.

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My wheels have a backspacing of about 4 1/8 inches (or ~ 105 mm), so their offset is around 20mm. IIRC, the offset on the 914's OEM 15-inch wheels (Fuchs, Mahle, or Pedrini) is 42mm. That means that the American Racing wheels on my car are about 20mm (slightly more than 3/4 inch) outboard of where an OEM wheel would be. With that much additional clearance I probably wouldn't have noticed any side-to-side difference, but with the AR wheels any difference becomes pretty obvious...and makes running a modern low-profile tire almost impossible unless the fenders are massaged.

Were those wheels original to your car? The dealer in Colorado Springs used to install them as a free upgrade (instead of steelies) back in 1972.

Hi Steve - great info.

I’m not sure if these were added by the dealer when the car was new or not, my hunch is that they were picked up along the way but I don’t really have any way of tracking that down.

I will have to pull these off the car at some point and check them for their backspacing and if they’re consistent or not.