2016-03-15

Damper position sensors


I've written before - I have a thing for measuring things. I also have a new set of adjustable Penske dampers and wanted to see how their behaviour changes when turning those adjusters.

So, I've bought a pair of position sensors and made 3D printed suspension mounts for them. So far just for the rears but plan to do it all around.  They're wired into my data logger.
For reference - rear right.
The same five runs with Mid/mid setting.

Rear left, five runs with different settings.
I've made an attempt before with strain gauges on the pushrods. I'm looking forward to combine the two methods and see what that gives.

This weekend I got the chance to do a few test runs. I drove the same piece of road five times and adjusted the damper on the left rear between each run.

The X axis is the damper velocity (input voltage derived by time). The Y axis is the probability.

There are theories that the best suspension settings are when the diagram is symmetric around the zero. Regardless if you believe those theories or not, one can note that the rebound adjuster moves the curve sideways, and the compression adjuster mostly changes the peakiness of the curve. The Mid/Mid setting, which is the default setting from Penske, is very symmetric and that is probably a good sign?

The usefulness of this can be discussed but at least this gives me something to look at, as I don't trust my butt-dyno at all. 

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