Front Stock Fox vs Fox 3.0 vs Icon 3.0 vs King 3.0: Dyno Results

[bstoner59]

Maybe we should start a discussion forum for this thread so we can have these discussions but not ruin all of Big J's work??


And I'm too late...

 

[Wilson]

we can bring the arguments into the shocking shock discussion to discuss the shocks let's leave the question's on this thread and discuss them on the other one.

 

[SvtDon]

Get to it stoner!


Wilson got it.....

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[Wilson]

it got stuck on the last page^<

 

[RaptorWifey]

Wilson is brilliant and beat you to it B. Everyone take the arguing over there and leave the technical discussion here.

 

[Raptizzle]

J, amazing execution and delivery with the the data.

What I think would be great is for the engineers in know with shocks (specifically their shock) is to get on here and explain why theirs performed the way it did on the dyno. Would be great to continue this well thought out intelligent test with intelligent input from the real guys, not just guys like me or the next guy...

 

[BigJ]

Great feedback guys! THIS is the kind of reaction that will only encourage more of this sort of thing. Keep it up!

To the Q&A:

What was the temperature of the oil when the tests were conducted ? Was it ambient? Or operating?

Ambient. All shocks were allowed to acclimate to the temperature of the room the test was to be conducted in (air conditioner was set to 72deg).

Ambient temps were used because, basically, its the best case scenario. To understand why, we need to talk about viscosity; a measurement of a fluid's resistance to flow.

For those not familiar with the term, picture your favorite red solo cup. Now lets say you get really pissed at it for running out of beer, and you poke a hole in the bottom and fill it with honey. Take that you say! But then you notice the honey is dripping all over your pantsless legs out of that hole you don't remember cutting 2 seconds ago. Curious, you clean the cup and refill it with beer. And, of course, the beer streams out in no time all over your lap as you stare in amazement.

Now lets say you decide you need a steam in the sauna to help boil that honey beer off your legs and underpants. After you wake up from passing out in the heat, you find this cup, honey and beer that someone left behind and decide it'd be really funny to pour some honey in... and you rerun the experiment. You stare amazed all over again as the beer streams out at about the same rate as before, but your mind gets seriously blown as this time the honey streams out too.

That's viscosity in action. The honey's viscosity is large compared to the beer, and that viscosity changes (lowers) as heat increases. By running these tests at ambient (72deg start), "fade" (the term used to describe what happens when a shock oil's viscosity lowers as operating temperatures increase) is a non issue, especially considering these tests were not stress tests (tests designed to find that fade point, and see what happens after. That's a very different test designed for very different goals).

1) were the Fox 3.0's new out of the box, or did they have an RPG tune to them?

These were the shocks that come from Fox, and not tuned or built to RPG specs.

It was decided to go with the Fox 3.0s (from now on I'll denote the RPG versions as RPG 3.0s) because they're really the baseline for what the Fox shock can do, regardless of who tuned it. Testing the RPG 3.0s didn't make sense because, frankly, there's no real standard when it comes to them. In other words, when you buy a set of RPGs, you'll do so after talking to them and telling them what you want. They'll then tune as per that discussion. So there's not much consistency between tunes, generally speaking.

However, these graphs still absolutely are applicable because what a "tune" does is play with zones, not add or subtract the zones themselves. You can "phase shift" between two curves, or mess with the velocity sensitivity, or ... but still, you'll have 4 compression and 3 rebound zones.

2) the front shocks have height adjustments available, were all the shocks on bottom perch, so to speak?

When you run a shock on a shock dyno, you actually remove the spring all together. The data you're seeing is of the shock itself, not the shock plus spring.

and where the shock cycled to reach normal operation temps before the tests?

No. The best case "cold" state was chosen to help minimize the effects of heat related fade on the data. Fade will unquestionably make the data look worse from what you're seeing. Testing that effect is a whole different ball of wax.

You said the X axis represents inches of travel, so it appears the King and Icon go from -3"(?) to +3" when the FOX goes from -3.75"(or so) to +3".
Do you happen to know why the travel strokes weren't the same on all 3 or does it not matter?

That's a good question. They weren't tested for different strokes, but rather I think what you're seeing is just an excel artifact. You can see that things go a little weird on the Fox 3.0s after 3" (that dyno acceleration/deceleration I mentioned earlier) so I'm thinking its just how the data was imported and then how excel drew the graphs. I'll check into it and update as unnecessary.

I agree with Blue here (surprising). I don't see anything that really makes one seem inferior to the others, so I'm curious what made him say that. But I can see how someone might take Blue's post wrong, or use it to start the shit show.

Thanks for splitting off the 'other' discussion. Lets keep trying really *really* hard not to screw this one up...

What I think would be great is for the engineers in know with shocks (specifically their shock) is to get on here and explain why theirs performed the way it did on the dyno. Would be great to continue this well thought out intelligent test with intelligent input from the real guys, not just guys like me or the next guy...

Agreed! I'll be the first guy to say I am no expert. I'll shoot all three manufacturers a link to this thread (RPG as well).

Keep the questions coming guys. I'll update the first thread to add some of this info to help clarify for the new reader.

 

[BIRDMAN]

Great feedback guys! THIS is the kind of reaction that will only encourage more of this sort of thing. Keep it up!

To the Q&A:
Ambient. All shocks were allowed to acclimate to the temperature of the room the test was to be conducted in (air conditioner was set to 72deg).

Ambient temps were used because, basically, its the best case scenario. To understand why, we need to talk about viscosity; a measurement of a fluid's resistance to flow.

For those not familiar with the term, picture your favorite red solo cup. Now lets say you get really pissed at it for running out of beer, and you poke a hole in the bottom and fill it with honey. Take that you say! But then you notice the honey is dripping all over your pantsless legs out of that hole you don't remember cutting 2 seconds ago. Curious, you clean the cup and refill it with beer. And, of course, the beer streams out in no time all over your lap as you stare in amazement.

Now lets say you decide you need a steam in the sauna to help boil that honey beer off your legs and underpants. After you wake up from passing out in the heat, you find this cup, honey and beer that someone left behind and decide it'd be really funny to pour some honey in... and you rerun the experiment. You stare amazed all over again as the beer streams out at about the same rate as before, but your mind gets seriously blown as this time the honey streams out too.

That's viscosity in action. The honey's viscosity is large compared to the beer, and that viscosity changes (lowers) as heat increases. By running these tests at ambient (72deg start), "fade" (the term used to describe what happens when a shock oil's viscosity lowers as operating temperatures increase) is a non issue, especially considering these tests were not stress tests (tests designed to find that fade point, and see what happens after. That's a very different test designed for very different goals).

These were the shocks that come from Fox, and not tuned or built to RPG specs.

It was decided to go with the Fox 3.0s (from now on I'll denote the RPG versions as RPG 3.0s) because they're really the baseline for what the Fox shock can do, regardless of who tuned it. Testing the RPG 3.0s didn't make sense because, frankly, there's no real standard when it comes to them. In other words, when you buy a set of RPGs, you'll do so after talking to them and telling them what you want. They'll then tune as per that discussion. So there's not much consistency between tunes, generally speaking.

However, these graphs still absolutely are applicable because what a "tune" does is play with zones, not add or subtract the zones themselves. You can "phase shift" between two curves, or mess with the velocity sensitivity, or ... but still, you'll have 4 compression and 3 rebound zones.

When you run a shock on a shock dyno, you actually remove the spring all together. The data you're seeing is of the shock itself, not the shock plus spring.

No. The best case "cold" state was chosen to help minimize the effects of heat related fade on the data. Fade will unquestionably make the data look worse from what you're seeing. Testing that effect is a whole different ball of wax.

That's a good question. They weren't tested for different strokes, but rather I think what you're seeing is just an excel artifact. You can see that things go a little weird on the Fox 3.0s after 3" (that dyno acceleration/deceleration I mentioned earlier) so I'm thinking its just how the data was imported and then how excel drew the graphs. I'll check into it and update as unnecessary.


Thanks for splitting off the 'other' discussion. Lets keep trying really *really* hard not to screw this one up...

Agreed! I'll be the first guy to say I am no expert. I'll shoot all three manufacturers a link to this thread (RPG as well).

Keep the questions coming guys. I'll update the first thread to add some of this info to help clarify for the new reader.

Corey from RPG sent me a PM clearing it up. It was on purpose, not an excel mistake. I will let him post the info if he wishes.

 

[justvettn]

Kind of wish I had seen this before buying my icons.....

So what would you have bought instead now that you have this information?

 

[BlueSVT]

Corey from RPG sent me a PM clearing it up. It was on purpose, not an excel mistake. I will let him post the info if he wishes.

Would like to hear some elaboration... Was the testing done by Corey, or is he talking about design purpose of the shock???