No surface is ever so smooth that the dampers are doing nothing. If you have ever looked at damper velocities with data acquisition, you’ll see the dampers moving a lot. Its quite amazing how much they can effect steady state cornering.

 

Exactly Blackey - BUt that is the difference between theory and reality, or living in a vaccuum and being in the real world. If only life were as simple as living in a void with all variables known..

 

so was i talking about non reality? or do dampers have an effect? or... is that the reason for the improved numbers or partially? so what are the numbers attributed to? cuz the numbers are the numbers afterall, japanese or not, that's what they got, i mean you can compare mr to gsr if you please...

 

blackey, you're correct, the dampers are working over the course of the skid pad test to maintain the vehicle's composure. However, that lateral acceleration is averaged over the full 360° of the test, so the small instantaneous benefits are washed out (yet another reason why I don't like constant radius tests). The benefit of a tight low speed valving is insignificant when compared to the what AYC, better tires, and a higher roll stiffness will do for you. trinydex, if you want an answer, that's where I'd be looking - AYC, tire changes, higher spring rate, larger anti-sway bars.

MR2zx3 - I don't live in a vacuum. I do this **** for a living. I've done a skid pad test of a vehicle with no dampers on it - scary as all hell, but the numbers were nearly as high as the dampened test - something like 0.65 vs 0.68. I also ran a 600' slalom with the same two setups, and the difference was considerable because the vehicle wouldn't come out of the turn with no dampers.

 

Woah there nelly... Wasn't directing that at anyone. it was just an agreeement with Blackey. Doing it for a living is what I was talking about anyways. Doing it in real life gets you a lot more than armchair/internet theory discussions every time. Just Do It and all..

 

hmmm... would they leave the same spring rates or not tune them if they added new dampers? could that be a diff, cuz i don't believe the articles said anything about new sway bars. and can ayc bring one whole tenth of jump in skid numbers (hmmm... prolly huh?).

 

WestSideBilly,

please don't take offence, but this is what I was getting at. This is just my opinion, but is also shared by at least one IRL chief engineer. Dampers absolutely have everything to do with static cornering on a race track. Low speed damping will affect static cornering, and have a definite affect on grip, and feel, which I think is just as important since most of us are not Schumacher. Too much low speed compression or rebound will cause a loss of grip.

And to me .03G's is significant. Aka:

In a 50 MPH corner at 1.7 vs 1.73 G's this equals

.6 feet per second
39 feet/minute
1560 feet in a 40min race
105 car lengths at the end of the race

So where do you work? Always nice to have someone else to bounce ideas off of.

Bill Lackey

 

Well, there's no such thing as static cornering. Hard to go around a turn while not moving Even quasi-static cornering (constant radius, constant speed) is an artificial event. I'm not trying to suggest that no dampeners would be better for a track or other real world test, just trying to illustrate that it takes a huge change in low-speed (referring to the rate the wheel is moving vertically) valving to make gains in skid pad type tests. In a true dynamic maneuver (such as a fast "s" curve), even small damper changes can reap huge results. Based on what we know of the MR, it's pretty much a given that the dampers have been revalved, but those changes are going to be subtle tweaks that won't yield large changes like the R&T article was seeing.

Also, that 0.03g change was going from no dampers to the dampers we were tuning, which were vastly superior to the OEM. The difference between the OEM and our tuning was negligible on the pad, but on the road the difference was night and day.

 

Absolutely agreed. There is no such thing as static cornering! I think we are saying the same thing so I'm going to stop typing.

Bill

 

Bill - FYI, you have PMs turned off.