Help with wheel alignment specs
 

Can someone provide me with the specs to have a 4 wheel alignment done to my 1970 914-4? I have looked in the usual places for advice on this. Same old story, I remember reading advice on this topic, but can not remember where!! The car is used for spirited driving, and I want the set up to be pro handling without wearing out tires every 5k miles.

Thanks for any help you may be able to offer.

M. Ian McCloskey
Arlington VA

Stock specs are 0 camber in front, -1/2 degree in the rear. (That's negative camber, where the top of the tire tilts in.) Caster is around 6 degrees, toe in front is about 1/8" in, about the same rear.

For more aggressive street driving, put another -1/2 degree camber on both ends, giving you -1/2 degree front and -1 degree rear. You can go more if you are very aggressive and/or have very very sticky street tires or competition tires. But the -1/2 & -1 should give you decent handling and not wear the tires too badly.

Toe-in all around is good, maybe 0 toe in the front. But that will make the car "twitchy" and "darty", and you'll have to pay attention to it every second. (Changing lanes when you change radio stations--whee, fun!!) You can go with toe-out for an autoXer but I wouldn't with a street car. Toe-out in the rear is a Very Bad Thing. It tends to lead to spins for no reason at all...

Caster should be pretty close to max, as long as it's even from side to side.

--DD