Just stumbled onto the above link. They claim you can revalve your shock while it's on the car... My simple mind is fumbling on how this sort of magic / voodoo stuff works...
Anyone seen this before?
Just stumbled onto the above link. They claim you can revalve your shock while it's on the car... My simple mind is fumbling on how this sort of magic / voodoo stuff works...
Anyone seen this before?
From what they describe and what I'm seeing, my best guess is solid piston and some bypass tubes. So instead of the valving being done with shims and holes in the piston, it's done in a valve pack at the end of the shock and the solid piston just pushes / pulls fluid through the tubes and valve pack.
The downside would be smaller piston diameter for a given shock size in a coilover setup, as the bypass tubes have to fit in somewhere.
I had a good look at them at SEMA. They are voodoo as far as I can tell, I was not able to figure out exactly how it works. It appears that the interchange shim packs are dry.
So looks like the adjusters, instead of just being simple bleed screws, have some actual valving to them making the adjustment profile changeable. Not quite a true "revalve" but close. Unless there's really no valving on the piston and all the damping force is being generated through the adjusters but that seems like a bad idea for a lot of reasons. It's an interesting concept, I'd be curious to see how well it works.
Their website only shows soft and firm valve packs, and I don't see a shim pack to rebuild or tune those valve packs. Two valve settings plus the adjustment knobs still isn't enough adjustment. The advantage of removable valve packs is the near limitless adjustments or rebuilding a valve stack.
In reply to Nate90LX :
It looks like there are separate rebound and compression adjusters, at least. It is hazy on if high speed and low speed damping are separately adjustable.
Interesting if they can do these in a strut housing.
In reply to Knurled. :
I saw it was separate rebound and compression valve packs with separate adjusters. Its still probably not enough range or adjustment. And like you said, this is no different adjustment for low, medium and high speeds.
Also, I think Ohlins had a high end damper with external valves. And I thought you could replace them with out taking apart the whole damper, but I don't think they sold them as replaceable on the vehicle.
What's interesting to me is that the interchangeable pieces appear to be 'dry' as Keith said, or in other words you don't have to mess with the shock fluid. It's always been possible to just have your main 'shock looking thing' be a regular hydraulic cylinder with a big hose hooked to a remote cylinder that has the valving in it. So, you could revalve the shock without technically dismounting it, but you're still dealing with the fluid.
This design LOOKS like you are basically changing out preload springs FOR the valves without touching the valves or the fluid. So the valves would not be on the piston as usual but at the bottom of the main shock cylinder controlling fluid flow between the inner tube and the outer tube/reservoir. With both comp/rebound valves mounted to the housing instead of the piston, and the external gas chamber it sort of mixes traits of the 2 designs in the picture below.
It looks nice. Here's hoping it works as well as i hope it does..
In reply to Vigo :
That makes sense, but it makes one wonder just how much adjustment there is if that all you are doing.
I'd think, if that is how it works, you could effect different characteristics by varying not only the rate but the preload. Like a spring that has low rate but a lot of preload would have high initial force to open the valve, and then slam open like a trapdoor.
Yeah, they call those little swappable pucks the 'valve packs' but I can't get my head around how they could actually be valves and still be 'dry'. I do see a couple of little recessed holes in the top of the pistons they cover, and the valve packs can only go on one way which could be to align them with those holes, and while the bolts that hold the valve packs down look weak it does seem like the bottom of the valve pack is a geometric shape that locks into a matching recess in the shock body, so... It could be that the 'valve packs' are torsion springs and the valves they sit on top of open by rotating (barrell valves?) rather than moving up and down like a shuttle or poppet valve. QA1 hasn't supplied any pics of the actual backside of those valve packs and I can't find anything describing how they work, just the mention of the 4 patents they filed for. Maybe once they actually get the patents they'll release real info!
This is the kind of thing I'll obsess over figuring out. Soon i will know....
If I am looking at it right they have a sealed interconnect between the oil and new valve body that allows the valve into the oil but does not let the charge escape. If so that is pretty clever.
Did anyone see the actual shock dyno charts? Here are the three valve packs.
Well that's boring in a lot of ways. I guess I assumed they'd at least be shifting the knee point or something that actually changed the shape of the curve, not just using it for a wider adjustment range of the same curve. All three have a pretty wide range too, I can't imagine actually using it as a tuning tool beyond rough initial tuning if you're doing something outside of the box enough that you can't make a guess at a starting point. Could probably be useful for switching between activities, something like swapping from autocross setup to drag race setup.
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