Help with wheel alignment specs

[mimccloskey]

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

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

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