Suspension Dyno

It is pretty easy to underestimate the value of a damper dynamometer to a suspension tuner. While one of the very important functions of this test equipment is to verify that a shock or fork is functioning properly, the dyno is invaluable when it comes to changing a shocks performance.

Let's say we want to add 10% to the high speed damping on a particular shock, how else do we know what the starting forces are and how do we determine if the installed revision have made the intended damping force change?

How about if through a lot of trial and error work out on the track, we find a "magic" setting; wouldn't it be good to document what as working well in that application?

A customer sends us a shock that works just as he or she prefers but one or more of the adjusters is near the limit of adjustability, how else could we valve the shock to provide the same damping level yet have the adjuster at mid range?

This stuff actually runs much deeper than those every day examples. We do half joke around here about how much the dyno hurt us when we test our intuitive canges and find that we didn't quite achieve what we wanted, having to open up the shock or fork and start over.

For me, the damper dynamometer I the only way I can feel confident I am sending our customers good work.

Nope, no pen. The dyno samples forces several thousand times per stroke and plots the data in one of several ways, in this case it is force vs velocity. What we measure for is to ensure that our valving work produces a force curve that falls inside of the intended parameters. We use a special stack on the ohlins 20mm kit and tune the fork clickers to give each customer our intended result. We look for matching force curves from one fork to the other as well as checking for adjuster function. Only one of the curves are printed out.

Force differential when comparing valving opening vs closing is generally indicative of hysteresis but part of what you see is due to the fact that there is still a compressible air column in the fork. For highly critical analysis of valving design, we would try to adequately vent the fork under test. For the most part, our customers prefer to get their forks back without a bunch of drilled holes.

The dyno software can remove much of the gas pressure force ant the curve you see shows us what we need to know about your forks meeting the desired parameters.

Thank you for your business!