It's not? If the crap dampers you've seen in Pro Touring matter, then those people driving on them should be losing, right?
Barbaro's claim seems to be that the guys in that class who are driving on JRIs are winning more than the guys driving on any other damper. I presume he means that they're winning even against guys driving on MCS dampers and other high quality dampers as well as the crap dampers.
Look, I was noting that "Pro Touring" cars are probably the least relevant group to look at for top damper development.
Most of these cars are still based on 1960s suspension tech, with some portion of those entrants having upgraded front clips, and fewer still with updated rear suspensions. There is also a LOT of free stuff given away in this series as sponsorship, which tends to
buy some brand loyalty. Its smart marketing, that. This crowd seems to have more of a "lemming effect" than most: if one guy runs Brand X and is fast then 1,000 other guys with similar cars copy that, without question, without looking elsewhere. Its just what happens here.
I don't know the prevalence of JRI winning in this series as a percentage basis. I've heard of other brands used more commonly than theirs, actually. But what I'm saying is this Pro Touring movement is probably not the bets place to look for performance shock
competition results. I've had some moderate success competing against many of the top cars at Goodguys and Optima events. I know these racers, the shop owners, and consider many friends of mine. Yet I am still saying that there is some room for improvement on a large percentage of the Pro Touring crowd's suspension selection and setup advice. The top 2% of these series are serious but there are a lot of folks "just there for the fun", so looking at these series for trendsetting is dubious.
Do you know something more about Pro Touring competition that makes it the one to look at for shocks? Barbaro seems to be just repeating what someone else told him, and you are just here backing up what he said... so that's 3rd hand information. I just try to caution people to
look at their sources when basing costly, crucial purchases like monotube coilovers for their competition car. Do your home work.
Time Attack groups in the USA have
rampant sponsorship agreements and free parts given to top teams so its also not a great place to look for shock trends. Drifting... I won't even go there, but also rampant sponsorship deals and no real direct competition (this is a judged sport). SCCA Solo is difficult to look at because the driver's tend to be so cheap! Its said in jest, but its still mostly true.
Pro Racing and NASA/SCCA wheel to wheel are better sources for shock use data and wins.
I noticed this (MCS picked for Spec Iron). But I don't see how that makes any difference. Why? Because it's the spec for the entire class. Is maximum performance the criteria for that? Why would it be, when it's the entire class that gets it, and therefore the entire field is equal in that respect, thus making the performance factor irrelevant?
Again, respectfully, it appears you have no depth of this situation either. I was personally involved with the decision makers who picked this shock for Spec Iron's new spec suspension. Vorshlag actually made two bids for this new series spec last year, both monotubes, including the MCS suggestion they went with.
They actually DID care about performance when they chose the MCS shock entry for the Spec Iron series. Why? Because the outgoing spec was still legal and pretty good stuff - and ironically, it was based on the JRI front strut. The rules makers for Spec Iron were driven to have the new spec not be slower than the old HVT/JRI spec shocks.
So instead of the lower cost/reliable/monotube offering we suggested, they went with the MCS setup (a higher cost option), to ensure competitiveness against the old spec. The old spec HVT/JRI shock is still legal, but some number of Spec Iron racers have moved to the newer MCS option - because they feel it will be faster. This spec just changed late last year so we won't know how they stack up head-to-head for a few months. But I'm pretty sure many more will move to the MCS in 2016. We're selling to these guys directly, so I'm seeing the trends and talking to these guys first hand.
Durability, cost, tuning range, etc., all make sense as criteria for dampers specified to be used in an entire class. But I fail to see how performance matters for that whatsoever, when the entire class is going to be at the same level of performance precisely because the dampers are specified by the class. As long as the performance of the damper is adequate so as to not cause people to leave the class, that is.
Again, when there is ever an "old" spec replaced by a "new" spec, there will be racers that still have that old setup and
don't want to change, mostly for cost reasons. I've talked to dozens of folks already
"Damn it, I paid for the old spec shocks and I shouldn't have to buy the new spec!" Can't blame them.
To fix this particular situation, rules makers for these series
tend to "grandfather in" those old spec parts for a number of years. So the new "spec" shock had to be as good or better, otherwise new builds for this class would be at a disadvantage, because the company who made the old spec in this case can no longer supply racers with the outgoing spec shock. So again, respectfully, sometimes there's more to a situation than you realize.
Yes, indeed, it ("winning matters") does (well, to those that care about such things, anyway
). But as dampers go, the only classes that matter for
that determination are those that allow the team to use whatever dampers they wish. None of the classes you called out qualify in that regard, and that makes them irrelevant to this discussion.
What? Man.... I.... I'm wondering how you can be this adamant about something yet still
this wrong on so many things? What series are you thinking of? Again, this mythical one spec series (Spec Iron) has two legal shock specs - the old (HVT/JRI) and the new (MCS).
But the images in my previous post, of NASA GTS and IMSA Pro Racing winners on MCS dampers I showed, all race in series have OPEN shock specs. They can use whatever brand they want. All of the big boys in the shock world play in these series, and there hasn't been a spec shock in the top US pro racing series in several years. Again, something I had a part of... we repaired many of the GRAND AM spec strut housings when they had a spec shock.
GRAND AM used to have spec shocks for various classes, at one time it was Koni (and called the Koni Challenge), then it became AST (yet the outgoing Koni spec shocks were still legal for a number of years). But that experiment didn't work to well for the racers there (long LONG story) and GA officials ended the "spec shock" requirement in the last years before this series merged with IMSA.
Spec series are done differently, of course. We've dealt with a lot of rules makers for spec series in the past where our camber plates have become the spec in a some semi-pro and pro series. When racers are involved we usually win the spec. When politics is involved, we usually don't.
But the experiences of the people who buy MCS dampers and use them in classes that do not mandate them do matter. The question is: did those same people try JRI dampers as well? Penske? Ohlins? What dampers were they on prior to going to MCS? And was that the only thing that changed, or did they change other things as well, such as spring rates?
These racers I mentioned above (IMSA series, NASA GTS category, etc)
can choose between Moton, MCS, JRZ, Penske, Ohlins and others - even JRI. And they are some of the few folks that can
afford to test the various brands and models as you alluded to. So what is winning the most this past season? MCS.
I'm still waiting for someone to publish their back to back (preferably double-blind) testing of a car with JRI, MCS, and whatever else might be in the running, all under the same conditions (spring rates, track, weather, unbiased driver(s), etc.), and all after tuning the dampers to be optimal. I expect I'm going to be waiting for a very long time.
You might as well ask for a Unicorn for Christmas from Santa.
Pro teams
don't publish their testing results like this. That would be competitive suicide. And shops that sell dampers (like mine) don't have a good reason to post "negative reviews" of some brands like you want, either. It makes those shops look like "the bad guy" when they trash talk other brands. I try
really hard not to do that, but I'm not perfect.
Instead, Pro Teams race on what they find to be the best (either through direct testing or long term experience with other brands) and shops that sell dampers use/sell what they prefer from their own testing and long term experience. Sometimes there might be sponsorship involved in certain shock brands at the Pro level, but not with MCS from what I've heard. Racers pay to play with this brand.
Not everything is as black and white as some might want it to be, and many lessons are learned the hard way over long periods of time. Not everyone is willing to give away their experience for free, with perfect test data all wrapped up in a bow. This head-to-head testing you dream of is EXPENSIVE and its very hard to find a 100% impartial team/shop/driver to give that. When there is a Consumer Reports for high end suspensions, please let me know because I'd like to send them
the best camber plates to test, ha!
I wanted to also point out that
not once here have I said something negative about JRI here. I think they actually make good dampers, we have worked with these directly, and I've met the key players at their company before. Monotubes, some inverted struts, and the principle came from Penske. I don't agree with some aspects used on the Cortex/JRI coilover kit, but its minor stuff compare to a lot of the crap I've seen sold for this S197 chassis. Vorshlag and even built some housings for the first HVT/JRI struts inserts used in Spec Iron. The HVT/JRI struts were actually pretty nice pieces, but the supplier had delivery/time problems that hurt the series pretty badly (so much so that the National Championship was cancelled in 2013 - at Miller Motorsports Park, where I was racing that year, and I spoke at length to the series director about it) and eventually the supplier went away. I know a lot more about this situation than I care to share and I probably said too much as it is. Oh well.
I just wanted dispute some of the unfounded, much repeated claims that Barbaro kept making, over and over and over, almost like a broken record. It sounds from his own words that has only ever had ONE good set of monotube dampers (and frankly this can be a
big change from twin tube offerings, once you experience
real shocks!) and he's going to sing their praises. Good for him, but I take it form his posts that he also has no direct experience with
other quality monotube dampers. He just repeats what someone else told him (these "authorities"). Also, I suspect he has no racing background on his car to fall back on as evidence of their exceptionalism. Again, that's not saying he cannot and should not speak up about JRI dampers, just that his limited experience doesn't make him the expert on all monotube brands.
Not every opinion should have the same weight. That's what we all do here on these forums - try to convince others we are "more right" than they are, heh.
I personally have sold or installed thousands of sets of monotube coilovers over the past 12+ years. All of the brands, used on all types of cars, most of which I've driven before and after. I've also seen long term trends with reliability, serviceability, dyno testing, installation issues, quality, and factory support from each.
And no, I don't share all of what I've learned publicly. MCS, Bilstein, AST, and Moton are the key monotube dampers we carry, but we've installed or worked on monotubes by Penske, JRZ, Ohlins, WP, JRI, KW, Koni, lots of brands you never heard of, all sorts of twin tubes, and all sorts of Chinese built monotube brands that go by a variety of names. We sell what we sell for good reasons - I'll leave it at that.
Look, I don't mean to come off as a prick here. But when I see folks .... talking out of their depth I feel like I need to step in and fill in the gaps, if I can. I hope this helps and doesn't piss off Barbaro and kcbrown.
Thanks,
