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G-forces imposed on bike suspension

nelsonjm

Monkey
Feb 16, 2007
708
1
Columbia, MD
After hearing about the canfield brothers video contest, I have been thinking of building a microcontroller based device to record how well suspension systems absorb impacts using accelerometers. I was thinking of attaching one accelerometer to the bike seat and the other on the rear triangle close to where you bolt the wheel on. If you compare the two values, that should give some valueable feedback... right?

What G-forces would I expect to see? Different accelerometers have different sensitivities so I would need to know that before even starting to assemble something. Is there something better that I could measure too? My background is software so other than applied physics (falling down stairs) I get lost.

Hmm.. this might be nice for custom tuning suspension setups, eh? :)
 
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Leppah

Turbo Monkey
Mar 12, 2008
2,294
3
Utar
Or FOX. I saw some of the FOX Dh team in bootleg one year. They were doing the same run, over and over so they could tune their suspension. I think they said they had something on the bikes that was measuring how far the fork and shock compressed, how far it rebounded, how hot it got, how many times it bottomed out.....you name it. They'd do run after run and go right back to the tent for little adjustments.
 

nelsonjm

Monkey
Feb 16, 2007
708
1
Columbia, MD
Thanks, I searched for the shock clock and found this:
http://www.tracksidetech.net/shockclock.htm

It sounds like an expensive ultrasound distance measurer (for moto) which could be a simple way to measure fork travel. Once you had the data you could use math-fu to get velocity/acceleration/etc for tuning.

Talking to PUSH is a great idea, I'll probably give them a shout after researching the "ideal" suspension setup more.
 
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