Originally Posted by
Stede Bonnet
To say we, "Carrera" were big on big bleed/digressive is a little misleading, like that's all we knew how to do. We built whatever the customer wanted. For example we had an asphalt customer who wanted all his shocks(4-7 valve) on compression from 1 in/sec - 3 in/sec to all be the same, but wanted them to blow off differently. So we built them that way. We also built rear shocks for Talladega cup cars(before the rules change) to qualify that were more than 1500 @ 1 in/sec rebound climging to in excess of #3000(customer specified). Chub Frank, at that time, liked running digressive RS shocks with 5 rebound and 3 compression, but this was in line with the setups of that time and he won the Stars title running exactly that. We built a Magne-shock for the military hummer program that broke their dyno, which sounds bad but that earned us the right to move on to the next level in their trials. So you see we had a broad spectrum of what we could and did do. My main focus was R&D, developing different curves and testing different fluids and components. Carrera's didn't just come in one flavor.
In closing, I have a question for those who believe that some things can't be seen or have not been seen on the dyno. If you can't measure a given designs effect in some way, how do you prove it made a real change and isn't some placebo effect? Their are good dyno's and their are great dyno's, the great ones can tell you everything that's happening. Most "racer" dyno's just don't have the technology to do it, most only give peak velocity dampening numbers. I guarantee the shock companies that developed the parts and shocks know exactly the effects the those parts had before they left the lab and could accurately measure them on their dyno.