Alignment and suspension help needed.

[billroth]

I just had a chance to have my car up on a rack at a community college night school course called, interestingly enough, "Know Your Porsche". Lots of fun.

Anyway did and alignment and found some problems. I have done tons of reading on the forum and searches ad nauseum and and looking for some help. BTW, 1985 Coupe, original suspension, 60K miles. As far as I know, no accidents.

Rear:
Could not get the camber on one side back to spec of -1.0. Best we could do was -1.5 on the left. Started at around -2.2. Tried to get the left to match and could only get it out to -1.3. Toe was OK.

Front:
Bigger problems. Left side camber was out to -2.2 and the best we could get it to was -1.8 and there was no more room. Again, tried to get the right to match and could only get it out to -0.7. Caster was OK. Tie rod bushings were shot we just got the toe close but didn't bother to get it perfect but easily close to spec.

The instructor/mechanic, suggested a camber plate with more adjustability as a quick and relatively cheap fix. I have only done one track day but may do more if I can.

Anyway, question is, what to do? Also, while I'm in there?

I was thinking, camber plates, tie rods, to start. If i want to go nuts, refresh the whole deal in the front. I was hoping the leave the rear for another time and save some cash. If I do that, any problem with just doing the front? I was not planning on doing torsion bars or sway bars. Just bushings.

What do you guys think? Anything else I should worry about?

Lawrence

[stlrj]

If you want to briing your alignment closer to spec then you will need to raise your car back up to original factory height. Otherwise you will just have to live with the extra negative camber like the rest of us.

[JJ 911SC]

Originally Posted by billroth

I just had a chance to have my car up on a rack at a community college night school course called, interestingly enough, "Know Your Porsche". Lots of fun.

Lawrence

Lawrence

I wish I could help on this one but I'm relatively new at owning a P car but... could you give me some detail on that course? Not that I'll drive to Peterborough but I'll start checking around Ottawa for something similar.

Cheers

J.J.

[billroth]

Originally Posted by stlrj

If you want to briing your alignment closer to spec then you will need to raise your car back up to original factory height. Otherwise you will just have to live with the extra negative camber like the rest of us.

Do you think something like the elephant camber plates would help? To get it closer to spec and to enable matching of the camber from side to side?
Lawrence

[billroth]

Originally Posted by JJ 911SC

Lawrence

I wish I could help on this one but I'm relatively new at owning a P car but... could you give me some detail on that course? Not that I'll drive to Peterborough but I'll start checking around Ottawa for something similar.

Cheers

J.J.

At Centennial College. Six Wednesday nights, 3 hours each, $180. I have fixed things that were not picked up at a recent trip to the shop. Nice having a lift, tire balancer, alignment rack, tools, etc at your disposal.

[JJ 911SC]

Originally Posted by billroth

At Centennial College. Six Wednesday nights, 3 hours each, $180. I have fixed things that were not picked up at a recent trip to the shop. Nice having a lift, tire balancer, alignment rack, tools, etc at your disposal.

... at $10 an hour.

Good luck with the alignment.

J.J.

[GaryR]

Is the Instructor/Mechanic a Porsche Master mechanic or a shop teacher that works on cars? No shot intended, just important to know how much to read into his "help"..

[billroth]

Originally Posted by GaryR

Is the Instructor/Mechanic a Porsche Master mechanic or a shop teacher that works on cars? No shot intended, just important to know how much to read into his "help"..

One of the instructors was a Porsche mechanic instructor, Chief Mechanic or some such title.

The person who helped with the alignment runs a Porsche shop called Gtek in Toronto. He suggested bushings but said it could be more like struts, steering rack. Did not mention the ride height. He thought that it wasn't too bad for the street and suggested an adjustable camber plate as a quick and dirty fix.

They seemed like pretty good guys.

[scottrx7tt]

Originally Posted by GaryR

Is the Instructor/Mechanic a Porsche Master mechanic or a shop teacher that works on cars? No shot intended, just important to know how much to read into his "help"..

i have worked on MANY cars over the years, and the porsche 911 is one of the easiest cars to work on. Since when does one have to be a porsche master mechanic to work on a porsche?

[GaryR]

Me too, but I wouldn't take someone's money to teach a class. Sounds like the people teaching are professionals, which is all I was curious about. Spend enough time on internet forums and you will find that a LOT of clueless people give advice and sound very convincing...

[jurhip]

What is your ride height? Seems you are generally more negative (on camber). A lower than factory height may make the adjustment to factory spec difficult.

Others with similar ride heights could help share their numbers/experiences.

[billroth]

Originally Posted by jurhip

What is your ride height? Seems you are generally more negative (on camber). A lower than factory height may make the adjustment to factory spec difficult.

Others with similar ride heights could help share their numbers/experiences.

I think you might be right. I believe the PO said it was lowered. I will check that out and see if that makes a difference.

[tobluforu]

Ride height or not if heights are close on each side, you should be able to get camber pretty damn close unless you have a banana arm in the rear that is bent, and or the bushings are shot. Same goes with the front, could be bent or could just need all new tie rods, etc...
I would not buy camber plates to fix an issue that IMO is something else, but i'm not a pro by any means.

[911st]

We need ride height to fender opening and wheel size. Or factory style measurement to wheel center and torsion bar center from ground.

As noted above, when low a 911 picks up neg camber. Some of the US delivered 911's were so tall they could only get positive camber on I believe the front.

Adjustable spring plates do not change the amount of positive camber much. They help with making ride height adjustment easer and may help you get more neg camber.

You can determine if you bushings are bad by looking at if the rear torsion bar tube is close to centered to the retaining plate in the back. In the front look at the area just in-front of the adjustment point where the A arm pivots to see if it looks close to centered.

[billroth]

Just did a quick and dirty measurement. My garage is cold.
Front left 24 5/8" Front right 25"
Rear left 24 1/2" Rear right 24 3/4
Approx to fender at centre of wheel.

[billroth]

Wheels, 16" Fuchs, 205R55 and 225R50.

[911st]

Not an expert but here are my two cents.

First, are we confident in alignment numbers?

Euro Style is 25.5" ft 25" rr with that size of wheels. At euro hight there is little chance of suspention being to a point to cause problems. Below that and there are issues that can arise.

You are about an inch lower in front and about a half inch lower in the rear than euro. Unless you have stiff springs on the car and are setting it up for track work you are low. Much lower than euro with stock springs and you are pushing it. However, some seem to find it works ok for them. That low on the front you might have some issue with bump steer and or bottoming the shock if you hit a pot hole when pushing a corner.

On my 85 we set it up at Euro Style height. The 'most' neg camber I could get up front was about -1.7. I would guess there is about a half inch or about 1.5 deg of adjustment range so think if I wanted I could have come close to 0 camber if I wanted.

Not sure how you are getting so much front neg camber. Check your front ball joints for offset joints and your upper spring plate to see if it is stock. You might also look at how far the bottom of the ball joint is from the rim. It sould be a bit more than 1.5" or so I would guess with 16's. If it is close to the rim your struts might have been decambered and the spendles raised but that is a low probablity I would think. Most of us that autoX or do Drivers Edds want all the neg camber we can get.

On the rear the most neg camber I could get was about -2.5 to -2.7 on both sides.

Even though your car only has 60k miles on it, the bushings have probably taken a set and saged to the point where the torsion bars may rub inside there tubes. This many not effect your alignment much but might be concidered when making your plans.

If you still have the stock shocks, changing them to Bilsteins will rase your car up and probably get your rear close to euro. It would also rase the front some and you can get the rest easly with the adjusters.

As your car has been lowered. It might have a bunch of preload in it if the car if it was not properly corner ballanced. This might make things a little wacky but is probably not the source of you issues.

Just drive it untell you are ready to do the suspention so long as it dose not pull or have any other bad habits.

[jurhip]

Billroth, those are fender measurements - but they do give us a good idea that your car is pretty low. The 25.5"/25" ratio stated here is lower than porsche spec. You are ~0.5" lower than that. 0.5" lower on a car is extremely large with respect to suspencion geometries.

Try bringing the car back up to actual Euro height spec and then perform the alignment. From there you can come down.

Worn bushing may affect rear alignment some, but the front should be minimally affected under static conditions. Bad tie-rods will not affect camber settings.

Shocks do not support your car. Worn shocks may result in bad handling, but they do not affect alignment. You may need to adjust height somewhat for Bilstein's do to their slight spring effect, but I would get your ride height dialed in first, seconded by an alignment.

Good luck.

[billroth]

Thank for all your help. I will get the height dealt with and realign. But since the winter is coming, might be a good time for a suspension refresh.

Can I do this in stages? Or best to do it all together to save on alignment costs?

[Steve W]

I have similar to what you have now, about 1/2" below "Euro", running -2.0f and I think there's room to get close to 0 camber in front. So something does not sound right with your car. You do know there's something like a 15-20 mm adjustment range at the top of the strut right? On the rear, you may not be getting the camber movement you are looking for with the factory eccentric, so it helps if you remove the toe and camber eccentrics to shift the trailing arm to spring plate relationship into the angle needed for you to get the camber you are looking for. However, if you don't mind an aggressive street/track alignment, replace whatever worn/bad bushings you have and dial in the minimum matched negative camber in front, and add about another 1/2 degree to that for the rears. In your case if you can get -1.8 in the fronts, you can set the rears to -2.3 to -2.5. Install Bilsteins if you don't already have them, and stiffer T-bars such as 22-29s if it's in your budget. Get rid of those worn tie rods and install turbo tie rods. Tire wear shouldn't be a big issue - it's usually excessive toe that causes accelerated wear.