996 C2 Geometry

Looking to do the Geometry on my 2000 996 C2. I've heard about people applying the GT3 settings, car will be fast road and some track use. Does anybody have settings for the Geometry for me to use?? Cheers

For a car intended for both road and track applications I'd look at going neutral toe, stick with stock castor (8.0 from memory) and 1'45 neg camber front and rear with as much extra track as you can get away with and perhaps a little rake angle (drop the front slightly more than the rear). I have found the above settings work very well.

The go-to people for advice and having this work carried out are Center Gravity in Atherstone, Warwickshire. Contact gia their website or leave a phone message. Used them myself and recommendation based on personal experience.

Hi sje00, Based on my experience of my 996 C2, and hearing stories from others such as DynoMike, I'd say that the 996 is very sensitive to what I assumed were small adjustments in geometry. I first tried a Factory adjustment for X74 (My car is on H&R lowering springs which decrease ride height by 30mm all round) but with more front neg. camber. Which was 50' neg Camber at the front and 1 deg 40' rear. The toe was standard, so 5 ' toe in front and 10' toe in rear. The car felt good, and when really laying power down after the apex of a corner, I could feel the car going from a slightly understeer to oversteer balance which feels really nice. However I felt that it was slightly slow to turn in, and the car was a bit too "stable and steady" for my liking, also, the inside edges of the rear tyres were wearing fast. Second try, working with 9Excellence in Horley, I discussed with them what I'd like to try. I've gone with the maximum neg camber I could achieve on the front using the slotted top mount holes and standard control arms my car is fitted with. Front is now 1 deg 22' neg Camber. Rear is 1 deg 20' neg Camber. 9E advised that they wouldn't put less neg camber on the rear. The toe angles are as before.... The car is Soooo much more pointy and eager to turn in. I like this, and the car as a whole feels smaller and more agile on the road. Rear tyre wear is improved, but I feels I may have lost a little of the under to oversteer balance that I enjoyed before, so may eventually dial a bit more rear neg camber back in..... say 1 deg 30'? The point I think is that: 1.) The car, if all the suspension is in good nick (I've replaced pretty much everything) appear very sensitive to small adjustments. 2.) I think that (as ELA has found as well) more Front neg camber is a lovely thing, but individual drivers will have distinct preferences and not all agree 3.) My car is only used on the road. Track settings will be different again 4.) Using a good specialist such as Centre Gravity, if you can get there will be a good idea, and ultimately save you money in the long run I reckon. However, there are lots of other good independent specialists that will do a good job based on their experiences too. Good luck

There are several things you should bear in mind when selecting settings: 1. Can you put up with the uneven tyre wear and short tyre life that significant negative camber brings? 2. What profile tyres are you using? Higher profile tyres such as what you would use with a 17" rim can use a lot more negative camber than a low profile tyre because of the amount of give in the sidewall. 3. Straight line braking performance will be degraded by adding negative camber. There isn't a lot of weight on the front wheels of a 996 to start with. If you have hard suspension and low profile tyres, you're limiting the amount of weight transfer possible to the front wheels under braking. Adding negative camber to that cocktail means your available contact patch is also reduced. People seem to believe that lots of negative camber is a good thing. It is only a good thing if it complements the rest of the suspension & tyres. If you over do it you'll make things worse. If you have typical 996 on 18" rims then reduce the toe to a minimum as per ELA's suggestion as it's this that governs how 'pointy' the car feels. I would consider reducing your camber to -1 degree all around. I think ELA uses 17" wheels on his car (because he's a bit of a genius when it comes to creating the best possible 996 and 17s give a better ride and better handling through being lighter) and I'd bet my bottom dollar that if he used lower profile tyres he too would run less negative camber.

Before you go down the route of altering settings, it is worthwhile checking all the steering and suspension components for wear as otherwise there is little to be gained from tampering with settings.

Yes very true, that is part of the plan! 😉

Took my 98 996 C2 out today for a proper shakedown after owning it 15months and doing some restoration work to parts of the car that needed attention. The car felt light and floaty at the front, felt like it was wanting to oversteer and the rear felt like it was going to slide out on one bend. I've booked in for an alignment at my local tyre place tomorrow , can anyone explain what I should be looking for in terms of geo for a standard 996 with good stock suspension and new tyres on 17" Cup2's? Am I right in saying there's no camber adjustment on the front? Rear has toe and camber right?

Chaps, just a heads up for anybody looking to get specialist geo done in the South, I’ve been using West tuning at Thruxton for years, for both suspension install and geo, the set up he uses on my cars for fast road works really well (at the cost of knocking a couple of thousand miles off tyre life). Ray builds race cars and tunes a lot of high end cars so there is always some interesting stuff in the workshop too see

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Geometry… I love this topic! You are sort of correct. The rear allows for camber and toe adjustments. In the front, the camber and toe are also adjustable, but the camber adjustment range is really limited. I have heard from others that the maximum amount of camber achievable in the front is around -1.0 degrees. I have a set of camber plates on the front, which allows over -2.0 degrees of camber, but I settled for -1.4 degrees, a tenth or two less than my rears (-1.5 or so). With this much negative camber on the front, I can feel the front gripping throughout the turns, especially during mid-corner to corner exit. I am carrying much more speed than I used to. I also adjusted the rear toe to 2mm toe-in, and the front toe to 1mm toe-in. With the 2mm of rear toe, the rear end is wonderfully stable. And while this geometry setup has been handling very well, I will be changing it to something less aggressive because I want to improve my tyre wear. I want to avoid frequent tyre replacement, because it’s expensive and a pain in the ass. I’ve already chosen my next setup… Front camber: -0.75, toe: 0.5mm in Rear camber: -1.0, toe: 1.0mm in If this new front camber is not enough, then I will move it to -1.0 and match the rear. —— Now, I want to address the issues that you’re dealing with Uncle Monty. How new are your tyres? It’s been my experience that new tyres will feel squirmy for their first 1000 miles. And are you actually noticing floatiness, or is the front end suffering from dartiness? They’re both unpleasant symptoms, but the solutions are different. The floatiness can be solved by lowering the front end or adding additional aerodynamic downforce to the front. You want to limit the amount of air lifting the front end. But dartiness, or the tendency of the steering to feel hyperactively unpredictable, can be solved with geometry. After increasing my front camber from -0.5 to -1.4, I noticed an alarming amount of dartiness. I’m hoping that reducing the negative camber of the front will calm it down. There is a really good thread about geometry on PistonHeads that I have been following. There are a couple settings that have been shared that may fit your needs. What Does Good Geo Look Like for Fast Road Driving? - Page 1 - 911/Carrera GT - PistonHeads UK

I should say firstly that my car went in for a Hunter alignment yesterday and it's like a different car. I have mentioned this on 2 other threads but forgot this one. It just feels right now. Tyres are brand new Radish. Michelin Pilot Sport 4 (not S) , Im running Cup2 17" wheels. Floaty front end is now gone and I would say floaty best describes what it was doing. I'll read that PH article you've kindly linked and I think I'll start to get more involved in geometry

Oops, I’m late to the party. Would you mind sharing your geometry specs? I’m very interested in what they’ve done to eliminate the floatiness.

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I just posted to another thread about alignment quoted below

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That thread ended up a proper can of worms, the person shouting the loudest self admitted to running cup 2 tyres but not really leaving the centre of London and having averaged 17mph over his last 3000 miles, stereotypical Porsche owners showing us all up I posted my geo settings in there but people seem to think they are a little extreme for a road car, my car is nothing but a road car and the handling is quite remarkable now but people are obviously welcome to their own views.

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Mines not far off from yours, i have -2.3 front and -2 rear. 0.2 toe in rear