Last night I did a quick check of the front end since I had done the DE at the "Q" in San Diego as a test to see how the new struts, Koni inserts and Tarett mono ball strut mounts worked after a good alignment. The car handled fantastic and corners like it is on rails, actually 23x9x15 Goodyear slicks! Anyways, the right side was still at ZERO degrees as it should be with cantilever slicks, BUT the left side has PLUS .8 degree camber. It had moved after we spent hours aligning the front end and all. I do not think the strut got bent as I welded reenforcements at the spindle area so it would not move and the sheet metal has nice new super heavy duty braces, etc. The shop sjhowed me another 914 race car and said it had suffered the same problems and the fix was several hard welded tubes and diagonals to brace the upper strut mount sheetmetal and replace the area with a camber box!?

Has anyone else experienced this problem or had to add additional tubes if you are running slicks to stiffen the front sheetmetal in the mount area? I'll post a couple of picts of what I have so far and any ideas are appreciated.

I have had my car realigned at the start of the season for the last few years....cause I can't keep my hands off stuff down there. This year I did it just to take camber out for the slicks.
The readings for *everything* were different from the start of last year.....a large amount in the front camber...lost .7 neg on one side. Toe which had been in at both ends was now out. Rear camber was about the same but had less negative. Caster stayed the same.

914s bend, me thinks......Metal bushings & whatnot helps, but the chassis bolted attach points slip, near as I can figure.....particularly the rear 3 bolt outer mounts.

This was running *Only* 225 R spec Hoosiers.
Can't wait to see what it has done by fall with the R35, 10 inch slicks.

i'm running the goodyear R250 23x9x15 schlicks (autocross only) and have not had any problems with the alignment at all.
in fact, the car was set up with too much neg. camber than what is speced out for the GY tires and eventually i will take it down to -0.8deg but so far, the alignment has stayed where it was before.

completely stock tub and struts and all. no braces, no reinforcements. nada ...
Andy

Here's a pict

Here's another

QUOTE (J P Stein @ Aug 20 2005, 12:14 AM)

particularly the rear 3 bolt outer mounts

You could prevent that with some "droplinks" mounted between the outer ear and the chassis

Last one

As Jeroen noted, I don't have any trouble with the rear as I have both vertical and horizontal links on the outer mount and horizontal links on the inner mount so things are pretty solid nback there. The tube is seamless cro-mo and if the pictures show it there is the diagonal brace from the top left to the lower chassis.

John, looking at your pics, it's pretty weird that you have a camber change (at least on only one side as you discribed)

one of your braces mount directly to the shock mounts, so unless that brace has stretched it would be pretty much impossible to have a camber change caused by the the strut mounts
or you'd at least have the same amount of movement at both tops - one going more neg, the other going more pos.

In this pic...

the brace between the strutmounts looks bent (near the middle of the fire bottle) which would make it possible to stretch in/out
or is it just a weird deflection in the pic?

The one you are asking about is in fact bent since it used to go around the back of the fuel cell before I lowered it and I was going to leave it off but it ties the strut bolts together. It is thick wall cro-mo tubing and I guess it may flex a little but the larger two tube braces "should" take most all load? I plan to put the car in the garage tomorrow on the very flat floor to do some measuring after I get some 200# of weight for the driver's seat. I borrowed a set of scales too so I can play with the balancing some too. I'll post results of what I find. Thanks for the input.

You think maybe your front strut braces are working so well it is pusing your strut mounts outward?

If I'm not mistaken that area on a 911 is well known to be weak. People actually use their adjustable camber braces to pull their struts together at the top for more negative camber.
In stock form the 914 doesn't have the same weakness. I just don't understand why the panel and its upper reinforcement would be compromised for a fuel cell installation. The three tubes you have can't equal the strength of the original material that was removed.
As for the suggestion to install camber boxes, they are only useful for installing coil overs IMO. You could recover the strength of that area with strategically welded tubes of roll cage diameter (and reinforcing plates) to replace the detachable braces.
I beat the hell out of my car on the track year after year with the same size slicks as you use and the camber never changes.

Thanks Chris, that's what I was thinking. The original sheetmetal doesn't look too impressive but it sure got the job done. I originally had the fuel cell sitting further back and that is why the bulkhead was cut out. I looked at a bunch of the 914 GT cars and they use a similar setup to this on some of them and I wanted to give it a try. They mostly run lots of negative camber I think? I may have to add the tubes and sheetmetal plate reinforcements if this does not work out.

before you go out next time, mark the mounting positions of the strut mounts and take some other measurements on the chassis, so you can compare if it happens again and determine what has moved or twisted or...

Thanks, I had marked the strut mount bolts and all the jam nuts with paint and nothing had showed as moved. I have a set of dimensions and in a while I'll check things to see what has happened. The grand kids are here and I'll have to wait.

IMHO these cars dont get stiffer over time. The metal in the chassis does flex and weaken.

But from the looks of your front compartment you shouldn't be having any problems (as mentioned). Cutting out the wall section in the front compartment probably made it much easier for the front end to flex.

Usually a camber/alignment change would be related to damage to the body (where the suspension mounts to the body) or the suspension itself is wearing. Is everything together, güdentite? Torqued everything down properly? Are your tierods in good shape? Ball joints and bushings in good shape?

It could also be that the bolts and plates (arrow'd in the pic) are moving around? Use some white-out and outline them. After a heavy day at the track, take a look at them again. After I had a front alignment done and suspension work, I noticed after an autocross day they've moved out of my sharpie outlines.

QUOTE (Brando @ Aug 20 2005, 10:03 AM)

It could also be that the bolts and plates (arrow'd in the pic) are moving around? Use some white-out and outline them. After a heavy day at the track, take a look at them again. After I had a front alignment done and suspension work, I noticed after an autocross day they've moved out of my sharpie outlines.

I think that the strut brace, since it is mounted to the tub on one side and the strut mount on the other, the cornering forces are pushing your strut mount. The stock bulkhead braces just the tub.

That's a good idea of outlining the bolts. I had marked them and the paint has not broken, so it is hard to say. I just finished with an alignjment check on the flat floor and it is pretty close. I also used a set of borrowed scales and got the weights set pretty close. My wife got tired of sitting in the seat with extra weight for an hour while I did the adjusting. After the balance the camber is at .2 negative on each side so I am pretty happy with that. I guess my driveway not being flat made a huge difference where I would not have expected much. As noted the front end sheet metal does seem to flex around some, more than I expected. When the car was on the scales, I noted that opening the drivers side door made the weight on the left front wheel go up by 4 pounds!