1/10 Scale Damper Dyno

No quantitative data existed for the emulsion style dampers run on most professional grade RC cars. Much of what is known is based on feel, rule of thumb and the assumption that we understand the physics. Full scale motorsports has dynamometers to measure damper resistance at speed but no such tool existed for scale shocks. As an engineer I needed to know.

This project was built from the parts bin and based on an Arduino, a NEMA 23 stepper motor and a strain gauge. It cycles the damper using a carriage mounted in linear bearings and plots damper velocity and load.

Since damper data is worthless if you can’t correlate damper velocity to vehicle conditions an accompanying project was undertaken to fit a 1/10 scale RC car with damper potentiometers and a custom datalogger.