Historic FF Damper help

[brandscooper]

Hi
I'm looking for suggestions/suppliers/part numbers for a good steel bodied Historic FF legal shock please!
Thanks

[flatbroke]

Quantum dampers patrick is the man to talk to there , His son races a RF83 in the COB , very helpful and good value , lots of the modern guys using them also plus they have been in F3 etc for years

stay away from AVO if you can , many use them many moan about them
there very heavy and a friend recently brought some and they sent them back for a rebuild before they even fitted them to the car as one had a problem

[brandscooper]

Thanks for the replies and a few PM's! The Quantum web site seems to be down though? What about Spax or Bilstein?
Thanks

[ralt-racer]

Originally Posted by brandscooper

Hi
I'm looking for suggestions/suppliers/part numbers for a good steel bodied Historic FF legal shock please!
Thanks

We have run avo's and they do fail very quickly however they can be rebuilt by most of the damper service company and fixed so they last, another source is Tony Tompson racing speak to Ed Tonys son and he can get you some made to suit good.

Avoid spax (well gas ones anyway) as they cannot be rebuilt and are poor at the end of a race. From memory the old trac spax used to be ok though?

I've not used Quantums but I would guess they are up there with the Koni's and Ohlins of this world. Just make sure they are built to Historic ff spec not just ff spec as their is a big difference.

Benn

[nigel grant]

We use GAZ dampers on our Merlyn and have had no trouble with them, they,ve done two seasons now and they still seem alright. Benn,s right please make sure that whatever you buy conform to the Historic Formula Ford regulations which have been stiffened up for next year. They have to be steel bodied and oil filled twin tube type, single adjustable only.

[Hunter1300]

I looked after an machine shop for a little while and we were developing dampers for ourselves and we ran various dampers on the dyno and did all sort of wierd an wonderful test with some rather interesting results we tested gaz gold spax quantium avo, as mentioned avo failed the 'box' test...... yep didnt even get them out before had issues. Many people rave about gaz for multi purpose, kit cars race cars histeric FF we found inconsistant data across a selection of 5-10 dampers and the adjustment settings, clicks 1-8 say had minimal change yet 8-16 was massive adjustment (cant remember the click numbers before anyone pulls me up on it!)

We had some major failures too from a few of the favored brands , including a seizure after approx 100 km of moderate dyno run. Ha we put one of ours on a durability run which was approx 300,000 miles heavy running so much so we boiled the fluid

one damper that stood out were the quantium had a set adjustment figure so maybe 10-15LB from click 1-2 and same all the way to max..... and the dampers are well matched from random selection of 10.

Koni dampers are pretty good and the man you need is:
Raceline Suspension,Berkshire,Paul Drake

really great an knows his stuff..... he was around doing F1 dampers when they 'banned' the ground effects F1 cars and has some great tail an secrets of the day.

[Triple J Motorsport]

I have a set of period Spax dampers will be going to ebay at some point, if you are interested let me know.

I also have some Ohlins that could be converted to be legal for FF but these are worth a lot!

[jhh911]

There has been a lot of talk about Magic Dampers in historic circles of late,The question is if they exist are they really that much better.?I use vintage billsteins which cost £100 each to rebuild and will last another 30 years.What if any gains will I find if I invest in something more modern?

[Auriga]

We ran bog standard AVO dampers in 2010 when we won EVERY single race in the HSCC HFF Championship and included 10 lap records along the way. I am the first to admit that they are not the best quality but everything should be kept in perspective. Everything needs to be 100% and the dampers are just one small item in a long list of things that needs to be right, including the driver. I guess what I am saying is that average dampers will serve 98% of the grid pretty well. Of course we all aim for perfection and there is nothing wrong with that but there will be no significant gains by just bolting a set of decent dampers on if the rest of the car and importantly, the driver, is not up to scratch.

[dikko]

Talk to Ian Gardiner in Nthpton. He's a Guru with things that go bump in the night (and day).

Mobile : 07967 300537

Email: ian.gardiner@igracing.co.uk

[ralt-racer]

Originally Posted by Auriga

We ran bog standard AVO dampers in 2010 when we won EVERY single race in the HSCC HFF Championship and included 10 lap records along the way. I am the first to admit that they are not the best quality but everything should be kept in perspective. Everything needs to be 100% and the dampers are just one small item in a long list of things that needs to be right, including the driver. I guess what I am saying is that average dampers will serve 98% of the grid pretty well. Of course we all aim for perfection and there is nothing wrong with that but there will be no significant gains by just bolting a set of decent dampers on if the rest of the car and importantly, the driver, is not up to scratch.

oooh don't remind me...!!!

Regarding the AVO's I think you get good ones and bad ones also we had an off with ours and I think that knackered them.

Benn

[dikko]

This from A Caterham Sprinter if it helps...


2 years ago I decided it was time to update my 15 year old steel body AVO dampers with nice new alloy AVO units.


I took both into work and tested them, not only were the steel bodied units identical Lh to Rh, they were also identical to the new units. The only variance was a slight differential in damping for each adjustment old to new.

So from a performance perspective there was little point changing, but they looked nice :-)