Shock deals?

[SuperSport2]

I am curious to know what shocks teams are running and how much or how little $$ they paid for them.

We ran a set of free Fox Vannila RC's that an alumni gave to us.

This we tried shopping around for a better quality shock. We found nothing too promising out there with our current budget. We would love to run Penske's or Ohlin's, but we wouldn't be able financially to complete a car.

We don't want to, but we will probably run Fox shocks again this year. If anyone has any insight on future shocks, it would be nice to know.

Thanks

Brett
Washington State University Suspension Team Leader, Driver

[SuperSport2]

I am curious to know what shocks teams are running and how much or how little $$ they paid for them.

We ran a set of free Fox Vannila RC's that an alumni gave to us.

This we tried shopping around for a better quality shock. We found nothing too promising out there with our current budget. We would love to run Penske's or Ohlin's, but we wouldn't be able financially to complete a car.

We don't want to, but we will probably run Fox shocks again this year. If anyone has any insight on future shocks, it would be nice to know.

Thanks

Brett
Washington State University Suspension Team Leader, Driver

[DH]

We used Tanner racing shocks for 2006 - all four of them cost less than one of the Penske 8100's we used in 2005. Come to think of it, all four of them weighed less than one of the remote reservoirs on the Penskes too.

We are planning to dyno them this year along with some other shocks to investigate the range of performance, it will be interesting to see how they compare.

[SNasello]

The tanners are a good budget shock to run. You can also look at the Cane Creek shocks, theyre about 650 a piece tho. Risse as well, but i hear bad things about them, im sure someone else will vouch for that. We ran the fox vanilla RCs for the past couple years.

[jack]

the Tanners have no high speed circuit at all....um, you get what you pay for with those...

[Jersey Tom]

With shocks you defin pay for quality and performance.

Whats most important tho is knowing what damper curve you want.. and getting it,

[JHarshbarger]

The Cane Creek Double Barrels are actually $550 if you talk to Cane Creek about a student discount. A few other teams have ran them with good things to say about them. The low speed adjustment on them worries me since they are designed for mountain bikes. They do come with custom springs and have custom length and valving, though. Plus they are designed by Ohlins. Right now these are our shocks of choice.

As for damping curves, as long as you have a consistant damper, you can get a wide variety of damping curves for compression and rebound. Besides actual testing, these damping curves can only start off as a guess. I've also heard that the teams that ran the Double Barrels have not had to adjust the valving that Cane Creek uses for FSAE teams.

_ _
Joel Harshbarger
USF Motorsports

[GSpeedR]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by JHarshbarger:

Besides actual testing, these damping curves can only start off as a guess. I've also heard that the teams that ran the Double Barrels have not had to adjust the valving that Cane Creek uses for FSAE teams. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

you can always use simulation to define a good baseline before you even have the vehicle built. Is the Cane Creek valving determined by the FSAE teams or Ohlins engineers?

[mtg]

I've dyno'd a set of Tanners when I was at OptimumG- we laughed at how terrible they were. You'd be better off not using dampers than using Tanners.

Everybody seems to get all concerned about "mountain bike" shocks like they're from some different galaxy and need to be quarantined. It's a damper, just look at the dyno graph and see if suits your needs. The reason why the Double Barrels work well for mtn bikes and FSAE cars with no internal mods is because the adjustment range is huge.

[Jersey Tom]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">As for damping curves, as long as you have a consistant damper, you can get a wide variety of damping curves for compression and rebound. Besides actual testing, these damping curves can only start off as a guess. I've also heard that the teams that ran the Double Barrels have not had to adjust the valving that Cane Creek uses for FSAE teams. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is entirely dependent on your selected wheel rate and motion ratio! Entirely possibly (and quite probable) that the damper will be much to stiff or too soft in bump or roll.

[Tony K]

Agreed. It's not the adjustability of the damper that is the most important part, it's the shape of the curve. Given that the Cane Creek / Ohlins have independent high and low speed adjustment, it fares much better for tailoring a certain damper to a particular suspension design, but there's still a limit.

The Double Barrel still uses a piston with shim stack configuration, so while the external bleed passages are adjustable, you're still going to be constrained by the piston design, shim stacks, and range of adjustment in the bleed orifices. The Ohlins TTX, however, has the option of a solid piston with replaceable bleed orifices to suit a much larger range of applications.

From what I've seen, the Double Barrel has a relatively linear base curve, with a reasonable amount of digressive / progressive adjustment from the bleed screws. So for most FSAE teams, I would say that this damper would be quite well suited.

Our team has been toying with the idea of buying one damper and seeing what we can do to rebuild it with different shim combinations, but at $550 a piece, and no rebuild kit available from Cane Creek or Ohlins, we're still weighing our options.

[Jersey Tom]

Tony - check your email. Sendin you one in a minute. Still akrezel..?

Btw, the TTX40s are damn awesome. You can rebuild / tweak them to work for anything between a very light FSAE car and a Champ Car. Too bad they are 3grand each (I think).

[B Hise]

I've had the opportunity to work extensively with the TTX40. It's a damn good damper.

Getting back on track, we run the Ohlins ST44s here at UMD and are very satisfied. Like some of you have said, there isnt a rebuild kit available. However, MSI in indy sells parts, shims, dampers etc. The shim packs they sell are way too many per package for any one team to use, but if we did a group buy and split all the various shims, we could get together a few nice rebuild kits.

I will investigate this if I get enough teams interested, I would say we need 4 or 5 to make it cost effective. Let me know if you PM me on the post, because I never check them.

Bryan