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Join Date: Dec 1969
Location: Silly-Con Valley
Posts: 14,946
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This has to be short, because I've gotta run in a few minutes.

Recovery--more or less, undo whatever it was that got you into trouble.

Understeer recovery: Back off the throttle, unwind the wheel a bit. Maybe most of the way. Back off the throttle the whole way if that doesn't work.

Oversteer recovery: Most 914s do not have enough power to kick the rear end out using power, except in the wet. So in general, when the tail starts sliding add more power and unwind the wheel. You may wind up having to go past neutral and steer the other way. ("Opposite lock.") If you got into trouble by feeding in too much power, then you need to back off the throttle and unwind the wheel.


Alignment suggestions:
Front caster either stock (6 deg) or max you can get and have both wheels even.

Street tires, stock suspension, reasonable driving:
-0.5 deg camber front
-1.0 deg camber rear
~1/16 inch toe-in front and rear.

Street tires, stock suspension, fairly aggressive driving or some autoX:
-1.0 deg camber front
-1.5 deg camber rear
~1/16 inch toe-in front and rear; possibly ~1/32" toe-OUT in front for a car biased more for autoX.

I wouldn't go much past this setup for any car with street tires.

Sticky tires, 140# springs/stock torsions/19mm front sway bar, autoX with some street:
-1.5 deg camber F
-2.0 deg camber R
~1/16 inch toe-OUT front
~1/16 inch toe-IN rear

Sticky tires, 220# springs/21mm torsions/22mm front sway bar, track w/some autoX:
-2.0 deg camber F
-3.0 deg camber R
~1/16 inch toe-OUT front
~1/16 inch toe-IN rear


Note that these are all very much "general recommendations", and are based pretty heavily on PCA Zone 7 class rules. Everything from exact choice of suspension components, to exact tires, to pavement, to driving style all affects the setup!! So these might be a half-decent place to start from, but to find the "right" place you really must test and tune.

The lesser-modified cars are set up for more benign behavior and less uneven tire wear. The more-modified ones will be less kind to tires and will require more attention when you drive them.

The advatage B has is that he's done enough of these to refine "general recommendations" into more specifics for individual use and so on. And he knows the questions to ask about what things will affect what setup you need. Gee, I guess that "experience" stuff really comes in handy, don't it?

--DD
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Old 10-16-2002, 11:23 AM
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