Wheel Alignment, Is this excessive camber? Options

[fiacra]

1975 1.8 fully stock California car. I just put in turbo tie rods as well as a new trailing arm bushing, so alignment was needed. Not easy to find shops that do alignment on these cars, but a local member recommended a racing shop about 30 miles away and I took it there. They asked if I wanted it aligned for "street driving" and I confirmed that was the case. Let me emphasize that this is a stock California car in well maintained condition (a previous owner had it for 44 years and really took care of it) and I'm a really mild street driver. It is rare I'll use every one of the 76hp this can put out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) . Street driving only, no AX, no racing. It drove fine getting to the shop, no pulling, no vibration, etc. They told me it drove "much better" after alignment, and that the alignment was way off, especially in the rear. I couldn't tell any difference in how it drove pre and post alignment, but remember I drive for fun and I'm not by any means an aggressive driver. I brought a bunch of 914Rubber sourced shims with me, but they needed none of them and in fact returned to me a bunch of shims that were already on the car. I didn't notice it at the time I got the car back, but the next day I could see the rear wheel stance was significantly different, with (in my opinion) a lot of camber. Prior to the alignment it had maybe 1-2 degrees of camber. Again, I can't tell any difference in how the car drives, but maybe I could if I really pushed it? My question is, is this correct? I've really not seen this amount of camber on other members cars. Also, I kind of hate the rear tires leaning inward look. Not sure if I should take it back and ask for this to be "corrected." Other options are to live with it, or take it to another shop. Any thoughts? Is this amount of camber correct?

[JeffBowlsby]

Roger Kraus Racing is/was the go to local shop for P-car alignments. I took a couple of cars there for 4-wheel alignments in the past, their work was excellent. I think I heard the biz changed ownership a few years ago and who knows the caliber of the techs now.

Maybe consider taking the alignment specs to them and see if they will honorably redo their work to comply. I am sure they charge a premium.

[fiacra]

Roger Kraus Racing is/was the go to local shop for P-car alignments. I took a couple of cars there for 4-wheel alignments in the past, their work was excellent. I think I heard the biz changed ownership a few years ago and who knows the caliber of the techs now.

Maybe consider taking the alignment specs to them and see if they will honorably redo their work to comply. I am sure they charge a premium.

Thanks Jeff. I value your opinion regarding the shop. Still the same owners. Roger was there, and his son Brandon was who I dealt with and who did the work. I will give them a call on Monday and see about going back with the car. Brandon did explain that he could not get the front end into spec. He had the left strut moved as far as he could. He suggested I could investigate getting a slotted plate (?) for the strut to allow more movement and then come back. He wasn't sure such a thing existed. He thought maybe the front end had been hit, but I have nothing in my records and I see nothing on the car to indicate accident damage. I know there was a lot of variability in how these cars left the factory, so that may be it. After a discussion with more technical jargon than I could follow the bottom line was he felt it was fine if I wanted to leave it as is, but I should watch for tire wear or any change in handling. I do feel the car drives fine. It doesn't pull, it tracks nicely, etc.

I printed out the specs from the Porsche Workshop manual. I assume these are what I should bring with me. We all know how much shops love it when you show up and explain to them how to do their work......

[Superhawk996]

I assume these are what I should bring with me.

Not really an issue of presenting them with the specs. The camber specs they have for front, rear, and cross camber are correct. They just ignored them.

The issue is they sent you out the door with 3 of 4 corners out of spec. Front cross camber (difference between left and right side) is also out of spec. Cross camber can cause pull issues. Even worse, they appear to have thrown a bunch of jargon at you to baffle you with (IMG:style_emoticons/default/bs.gif) rather than teaching you about what they did or didn’t do.

Both front and rear camber are related to ride height, so it is true that if the car is lowered substantially you’ll gain camber (increasing in the negative direction). I can’t tell from original picture if car was lowered or it just is the camera angles that make it look lowered because the upper wheels have been cambered into the rear wheel wheel / arches. If they did the lowering they should have advised you about the side effect. However they could still remove rear camber by shimming which they don’t seem to have done based on you getting shims back (and obvious appearance).

It is possible you could have a bent strut on left front. My opinion is that their job is to suss this out and advise you. Likewise if it was collision damage preventing them from adjusting camber, I’d expect them to be able to point out that damage rather than advising you about slotted top strut plates. FYI slotted plates are available from Elephant Racing. You definitely don’t want or need these on a street car. What baffles me is that a supposed P-car “race” shop tech mentions them but doesn’t seem to know if they exist? Just not adding up for me.

Your call on whether second chances are warranted. Based on the one side of the story, as presented, I’m not impressed. Might be a go to for modern P-cars but they don’t seem to be serving you very well based on what has been presented thus far.

Note 1: in some cases you can equalize front camber side to side by shifting the front crossmember. This would potentially remove camber from the left and shift it over to the right. The 914 crossmember doesn’t have much slop to do this with and the geometry isn’t going to yield much but it might get a tiny bit (we are fighting for tenths of a degree here). You would need a shop that knows what they are doing and that really cares to even try this.

Note 2: The other thing that I would try is to get some negative camber into the right front strut (target -0.3 degrees) so as to try to get the cross camber into spec even if I couldn’t get the left to move less negative at all (stays -0.6 degrees). This would bring cross camber to -0.3 degrees (in spec).