Originally Posted by
circuit.heart
You just need a wide road or corners or parking lot that you can do some swerving (safely) on.
As the word kind of implies, pogo just means that the corner of the car is bouncing up and down. The damper's job is to damp that out so the suspension (oversimplified, but...) compresses once, rebounds once, and that's it. If the damping is too soft (or blown), the spring force fights the weight of the car with no damping, so that corner of the car bounces up, down, up, down like a lowrider. Conversely, if the damping is too stiff, you may feel like the suspension is controlled but the forces transmitted to the chassis from the tire (through the damper) are huge, which upsets the tire and your kidneys.
All you're looking for is a balance - as soft as the damping can go without letting the suspension oscillate more than once. So you make a quick steering input (let's say, to the right) and the front left corner should dip down, rise back up, and that's it. Same deal for hitting bumps - compress once, rebound once, end of story.
There's some long-winded math that I'm going to skip, but basically if you tune the dampers this way, by the time you've softened them enough you should be somewhat close to the setting that gives you the most grip and stability. You can soften the dampers even more to make initial impacts feel softer, but you'll sacrifice that lovely BMW stability for more of an old-Lexus like floating over the highway.
Bookmarks