Anyone recommend Penske 4-way adjustable dampers?

[PHØENIX]

Seen the 8770 series, and they technically sound the nuts and are priced well too.

Will these work better than Nitrons? Or are Nitrons top-dog? But then arent Penske used in F1? So would that not mean they are officially formula proven?

Anyone driven with Penskes?

[Cerbera Speed 12]

[quote=PHØENIX]Seen the 8770 series, and they technically sound the nuts and are priced well too.

Will these work better than Nitrons? Or are Nitrons top-dog? But then arent Penske used in F1? So would that not mean they are officially formula proven?

Anyone driven with Penskes?[/quote]



Yes; remote reservoir 4-way adjustables (Ohlins and Penske). As you can adjust bump, rebound (slow/fast) etc you can refine it to whatever and however you drive. I can talk to you about the cars I have them on off-line.

[GreenV8S]

Nitrons stand in the gap between ordinary road dampers and seriously expensive race dampers. Ohlins and Penske are firmly on the race side of the fence, they cost many times more than Nitrons and no doubt work better. If you've got a team budget in the hundreds of thousands, and are after every fraction of a second you can get on the track, and have the resources and skills to set them up properly to suit that car, driver, track on that day then they are probably well worth every penny. But for weekend warriors it's a little harder to justify. For comparision, I've driven a car on Ohlins and to me they felt just the same as my Nitrons - very nice, silky smooth, absorbed bumps and kerbs without fuss. To me the extra £2k per corner was wasted money. For a pro racing team with sponsorship in the balance, it's probably a no brainer to get the best you can afford.

[Cerbera Speed 12]

GreenV8S said:

Nitrons stand in the gap between ordinary road dampers and seriously expensive race dampers. Ohlins and Penske are firmly on the race side of the fence, they cost many times more than Nitrons and no doubt work better. If you've got a team budget in the hundreds of thousands, and are after every fraction of a second you can get on the track, and have the resources and skills to set them up properly to suit that car, driver, track on that day then they are probably well worth every penny. But for weekend warriors it's a little harder to justify. For comparision, I've driven a car on Ohlins and to me they felt just the same as my Nitrons - very nice, silky smooth, absorbed bumps and kerbs without fuss. To me the extra £2k per corner was wasted money. For a pro racing team with sponsorship in the balance, it's probably a no brainer to get the best you can afford.

I agree fully. Even pretty good racing drivers and race engineers can get lost in the almost infinite permutations of damper settings. Also, most 4-way adjustables need an enormous amount of maintenance - if the Nitrons (or the like) have been optimised for a certain car then you are going to be pretty close but without the cost/complexity of adjustables for road driving.

[joospeed]

I had three way adjustable nitrons on test for about three weeks and still only sctached the surface of the permutations of the damper / spring combinations.

complete waste of money i would say except for the *one-up* factor.

double adjustable dampers are more than adequate for even the fastest of track day warriors. I think Peter H has hit the nail on the head regarding the race budget v performance ratio.

[jellison]

Get them ASH - you have very Deep pockets (I'm with Joolz though!).

[Ahonen]

Agree with the above. Two-ways are perfectly okay for fast road/track use. We find three-ways to offer all the adjustment we'll ever need - and that's on a GT racecar. We toyed with the idea of four-way Penskes a couple of years ago on the TVR, but even as an engineer I know I'd struggle to get the most out of two different rebound adjusters...

Most top line GT cars run three-ways, while a Formula Ford team that I assist runs two-ways and wouldn't want anything more.

A car that's been cornerweighted and has properly aligned wheels (cambers/tracking) will offer far more to its driver than one that simply has a myriad of damper adjustments.

Edit: Penske dampers are, however, very good. We ran them for three years on the TVR and now have them on the Mosler, too.

>> Edited by Ahonen on Thursday 7th April 10:10

[tvrolet]

Got them on all 4 corners on mine

It never ran long enough to see if they were any good

....after the rebuild though

WB

[nztrev]

The Malaysian challenge Chim racers all had the 3 way Penske,s, one of them here in NZ now with chev power,will be interested to compare them with the equivelent Ohlins as soon as my cars ready.

[griff2be]

tvrolet said:

Got them on all 4 corners on mine It never ran long enough to see if they were any good ....after the rebuild though WB

Willie - are you sure yours aren't 3 way Penskes?

[Plotloss]

Ohlins do a 3 way with a very thick body, 48mm perhaps, and remote reservoirs thats are cracking bits of kit.

Not cheap though, the Elise/VX fitment is over £3K

[nztrev]

Plotloss said:

Ohlins do a 3 way with a very thick body, 48mm perhaps, and remote reservoirs thats are cracking bits of kit. Not cheap though, the Elise/VX fitment is over £3K

Heres the kit

[PHØENIX]

Thanks for the info chaps.

I guess my question was more along the lines "would penske 4 ways be a noticeable investment for my ride" - but from Peter's and Joo's response, I might be just throwing money away for no reason, I love the nitrons, and cant wait for their next offering (currently in dev I believe)... but heard the Penske's are top class gear, was just wandering if they make that much of a difference against the nitrons.

So to the racing team they might be a good investment, but for the one man band it might be a worthless purchase apart from braggin rights...

I guess the only way to really see if they are 'better' is to get a set put on the phoenix and configured by penske experts and have a few wild test drives... I'll see what happens... but I'm open to better handling and money is no object if the factor of you making it round the corner in one peice or not is in the equation... I accept its drown to driver ability and experience too, but I guess with better dampers, you can fine tune your driving right to the edge, which is what I hope to accomplish at some stage, at the moment I'm pretty much a point and squirt kinda driver

[tvrolet]

griff2be said:

tvrolet said: Got them on all 4 corners on mine It never ran long enough to see if they were any good ....after the rebuild though WB Willie - are you sure yours aren't 3 way Penskes?

to be honest I don't know. They're Penske with remote resevoirs and n way....where n is some number greater than 1. Didn't know there were a different number of 'ways', 3 or 4, and don't know how to spot the difference.

In truth, I don't even know what adjusts what on mine...still a bit early to have that particular problem. I will have to find out how to adjust them at some point though, but that particular challenge is maybe number 1005 on my list of things to do.

WB