I've spent the last year fiddling with suspension and slowly but surely trying to teach myself beyond a simple re-build and maintenance. I have good relationships with local and national tuners, no complaints on their work most of the time, I just enjoy learning and tinkering. I have built my own little app for notes and tracking changes etc. Trying to move towards more of the translation of feeling to real data. By playing with Restackor and making suggestions for adding a face shim, did real world data support my feeling/estimate or was it actually pointing to an issue elsewhere etc.
I see Motoklik makes a more affordable product and BYB tech has a more professional grade device with higher sampling although it seems like the pro model if the only one that provides raw data output. Has anyone used these types of products? Did you think it ended up being a waste of time and money, you got more value from sending them to a dyno service etc. Just looking for general feedback and experience.
Getting good data isn't easy, but it's certainly possible. The real question is: once you have the data, what are you going to do with it? Many people see data loggers on the pro bikes and jump to the conclusion that they can just take that data and use it to tune the suspension. You can't just feed the data into a program and out pops a shim stack or something.
Position vs time is what you're going to end up with. Of course you can do some differentiation and end up with velocity and acceleration pretty easily, but what will you do with that? How do you use that data to make informed changes to your setup? You can sync up the data with video from the rider to give some insight into what's what, but that's still pretty limiting. Keep in mind that this data will be enormous for any significant amount of time logging as you need a high sample rate to capture all that's going on. So you'll need a robust way to process it.
Getting good data isn't trivial. But if you can manage that, I'd suggest starting with something simple: Log a lap and output a histogram of suspension position. You'll be able to see general trends of whether the bike is too hard or too soft based on that. But knowing what to adjust from there can get tricky quick.
Getting good data, processing it, and coming up with revised settings is a full time job for someone with a lot of experience and significant computational power and budget. Not trying to dissuade you from trying, just giving some insight to how hard it actually is.
Thank you, I appreciate it and all fair questions and insights. I work in the data science space and deal with very large data daily, so processing the data isn't what I'm worried about BUT being able to use it, I am. I was trying to dig and find some sample data somewhere but haven't seen anything yet. Some of your call outs are exactly what I'm a bit hesitant about taking the plunge with it and in my gut I believe you are right. The motoklik offering is in a price range I would be comfortable paying to play with, but I wasn't sure if it would let me have the raw data and if it did, was it actually actionable to your point.
Position vs time is what you're going to end up with. Of course you can do some differentiation and end up with velocity and acceleration pretty easily, but what will you do with that? How do you use that data to make informed changes to your setup? You can sync up the data with video from the rider to give some insight into what's what, but that's still pretty limiting. Keep in mind that this data will be enormous for any significant amount of time logging as you need a high sample rate to capture all that's going on. So you'll need a robust way to process it.
I think this what I need to chew on more. It's completely fair and my little homemade react app has some estimates and calculations, and basically was trying to find data to help marry up to for speed and stroke depth etc; which to your point doesn't really help with the translation of what's happening internally with the fluids and pressure etc. It would just be expensive data points to supplement something which I was already doing (logging loops and settings, making a shim change at a time etc.) I have a good home base for an all around setting; but have moved more and more to the enduro and sprint enduro side; and have been basically trying apply some educated guessing with data towards how to do that more smoothly via shims etc. For example, if I'm wanting a less lively front wheel and more traction/less deflection; I know which end of the clicker spectrum gets me closer to there; but that is far away from my homebase so that tells me I need to make some shim adjustments, if I do that; how does that change any relationship or balance to the other valving etc. Restackor has definitely helped with this and it's using some pretty complicated formulas and FEA modeling.
Side note, really enjoying the new nexus bar mounts and they have held up to some abuse from doing a few of the ANEC races this year, normally run the mako's.
Restackor is great, it can get you in the ballpark and identify trends, but it certainly has its limitations.
The nice thing about a dyno is that you can look at a single and controlled event without all the noise present on the track/trail telemetry. You control the input and you can see the output from your suspension settings. But you need to know what that input should be in the first place.
Telemetry and synced video can be useful there to find out what that event may be in terms of shaft speed, travel, etc. to get the dyno setting to replicate it. With that, you can simulate corner entry, g-outs, whoops, jump takeoff, etc. on the dyno.
So basically, to do it right, you need everything! 😂
Glad to hear the Nexus bar mounts are working well for you! We're pretty excited about them and have had a lot of positive feedback.
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