What's the best accelerometer?

[chasevdr]

Looking to buy a premium accelerometer for my Esprit. Been looking around & have only found 4 manufacturers all costing between $220-250. Are there any that I am missing and has anyone had experience with any of the below? In order of how I would rank them without real-world feedback:

www.gtechpro.com/

www.escortradar.com/gtimer.htm

www.beltronics.com/fx.html

www.race-technology.com/WebPage2/Products/AP22/AP22Home.html

[kevin-84turbo]

chasevdr said:

Looking to buy a premium accelerometer for my Esprit. Been looking around & have only found 4 manufacturers all costing between $220-250. Are there any that I am missing and has anyone had experience with any of the below? In order of how I would rank them without real-world feedback: www.gtechpro.com/ www.escortradar.com/gtimer.htm www.beltronics.com/fx.html www.race-technology.com/WebPage2/Products/AP22/AP22Home.html It is possible to build your own full on system if you have a bit of electronics ability. Analogue devices make the accelerometer chips most of these use, its called the ADXL202, for 2 G's or ADXL210 for 10 G's, same as what microsoft put in the sidewinder game controller, U can input the results into a "Basic Stamp" micrcomputer or directly into your laptop, a bit of Visual basic programming and away you go!, heaps more versatile than someone elses product. Each chip has two axis, so can do accel and braking as well as Lateral g's left and right. The C5 Vette and most late model Caddi's use them as well to measure lateral G's for their stability control systems. Can sample 100 times a second or more but its best to average it to ten times a second to make the graphs look better. Have used it on my Europa and Mazda Saloon and as you can guess there was a big difference in cornering G! Europa was 1.1 Peak and Mazda .65! Unfortunately my mates 200sx did a 1.1 peak too and was way ahead in the acceleration stakes.... Will test the Esprit when it is running again, anyone who wants to see the outputs I can e-mail them. Cheers Kevin Cheers Kevin

[greenv8s]

I've got an old G-tech unit (the old stick-on-the-windscreen sort), and RaceTech's AP22 and DL90. The G-tech unit was next to useless, completely inconsistent, but maybe the later models are better. I'm much happier with the RaceTech units. The DL90 has the advantage of working as a standalone multi-channel data logger and also provides GPS error correction on the inertial measurements, but does cost a fair bit more too.

[rlearp]

I have a G-Tech Pro and have been able to compare it with track results on a few occasions. In general, it works well and the results are accurate and consistent. Trap speeds on the G Tech were 1-3 mph too high and the time was about 0.1-0.15 secs too fast, but that is not much difference.

The thing is to get it accurately calibrated on all three axis and mounted properly. Mine would not sense the Esprit RPM - just wouldn't do it no matter what I tried. But, that isn't a big deal.

Overall I felt the unit is pretty good and provides useful info.

[janszott]

I like this one the best

[chasevdr]

Thanks for all the feedback. Ronald what year is your car? asking because I am wondering if an earlier car with different electronics than the unit was designed to exploit could have something to do with the lack of RPM recording. The shift lights and RPM recording would be a major factor in my purchase decision as the other ones don't have this feature. tks.

Oh, I read on their website why trap times are consistently higher than those provided by the track. They say it is due to the track taking an average between two points, and the unit giving realtime speed as an output of g's, wgt, etc.

[rlearp]

Mine is a 90. Results differ, someone had one that worked on a Lotus, a 91 as I remember.

R