dampers on the dyno and the musings of others

[Andrew Cooke]

In the quest for greater understanding I've had my De-Carbon Cup dampers dynoed. They're 20 years old, so not sure how that might have affected them. I'll be getting my Leda fronts done at some point, but one thing's for sure, they won't look anything like this.

Anyone care to offer some insight?

[Andrew Cooke]

I also had a pair of Leda rose jointed coil overs to test, I wanted to see what the adjusters did, and how the 2 matched. Note, these are old, but unused single adjuster dampers. I don't plan on using these so we didn't test every step, just a sample. The first graph is the same damper at 4 settings.

We started at full stiff, the trace was just horrible, the damper cavitated and sounded plain nasty, my mate running the dyno gave me a look that said 'told you'. We then tried them on full soft and got a 'not too bad look'. At 50% they look OK, and at 75% things start to look not so rosy.

I don't know what valving is in these, so don't read this as all Ledas will work like this, it's just these dampers on this day.

We only ran the second damper at 50% and 75% to see how they compared unit to unit. Again, not bad at 50%, but at 75% that borderline cavitation is showing.

None of that addresses the suitability of the damper curve, just how well it works. Should the curve prove suitable suitable these would be fine to use in the bottom 2/3rds of the range.

[SCHWARTZ]

That's a bit to technical for me but top work nether the less. I'd like to put the koni sport's on there and see how they do.:D

[youngscottie]

andy any chance you could take the time to explain some of these results to us laymen types as its something that really intrests me
ive only ever seen a chassis dyno on tv :ashamed:

[Alastair]

Mmm those Ledas don't look too bad at 75%... to my untrained eye anyway!

I am about to get my hands on a set of corner weights (free loan) - any books i should be reading up Andy?

[Woznaldo]

I've just pulled my Ledas apart for a rebuild because it has never been done and they were feeling a bit too stiff. A piston band was chewed out and the fluid on both was a black/silver and absolutely reeked!

It would been interesting to do a before and after dyno run to see how it effected the performance.

When the new parts arrive I'll just have to give a seat of the pants review. :)