objective vs subjective measures
New air spring/damper assemblies on all corners was part of my mid-life refresh @ 135000 km, so I asked my dealer if they had any equipment to actually test the performance of the damper, (I live in hope [wink11]) and as expected the answer was no. Anyway, Pedders Suspension advertise a suspension test, so I talked to the guy about how the test is conducted to try and make up my mind if it was likely to provide any useful information, my thought process was to do a before and after test to see if I could get some base line data. Unfortunately after talking to him I was not able to get enough technical information about the test to make a decision but I did it anyway. My subjective assessment is that the rear dampers have degraded, certainly enough to warrant replacement so it's still on the imminent to-do list. Just FYI, I have put in a table of the results of the original damper tests below. The car "passed" but I don't have the judgement criteria against which to assess the results, hence my old Vs new comparison.
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Front Axle |
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Rear Axle |
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My comments below |
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Left |
Diff |
Right |
Left |
Diff |
Right |
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| Resonant Frequency (Hz) |
14 |
1 |
13 |
15 |
1 |
14 |
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| Road Grip (%) |
84 |
6 |
79 |
72 |
1 |
72 |
Stated Test Limit <=30% |
| Time to maximum control (S) |
5 |
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5 |
4.5 |
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4.5 |
Unknown parameter limits |
| Wheel weight (kg) |
633 |
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682 |
727 |
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715 |
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| Pedders Performance Factor |
50 |
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50 |
55 |
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55 |
Unknown value |
| Axle weight (kg) |
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1315 |
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1442 |
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