For our initial drive, in comfort mode, there is still no doubt you are driving an edgy GT3RS but the ride was a little less jiggly. In sport mode, the ride was no worse than the factory mode going in a straight line and there was defiantly less body roll, nose dive and the fast steering response was even faster.
Now it was time to get to work. We have always felt that there was not much difference between sport and normal mode and normal mode had way too much high-speed compression and not enough rebound in general and mid-speed in particular. The first time around, in sport mode, we used the shock calibration table to use the shock’s full command authority on the stiff side, expanding the minimum stiff voltage to 100 mA. We then re-linearized the table. We then Globally offset the G Table to a higher damping percentage by about 10% and also increased the percentage of shock damping in the low G comfort zone by another 10%, this was to reduce the high-speed float and unsteadiness on undulations. Now sport mode felt pretty firm and track stiff but also stable. We then reduced high-speed compression by 15% in the front and 10% in the rear of the car to reduce hopping in bumpy turns. We may refine it more by tuning out more high-speed and mid-speed compression later. In track driving, we were worried that reducing high-speed compression damping could cause the suspension to blow through the travel when hitting FIA curbs and rumble strips but we found this not to be the case, if anything the car took these sudden impact type bumps better when we tested it at Cal Speedway.
Next, we went into normal mode and decreased high-speed compression by about 25 percent in the front and 20 percent in the rear, we decreased mid-speed compression by 10%. We also decreased zero-speed compression by 10% to reduce jiggle while increasing mid-speed rebound by 10%. These changes made a pretty big difference in ride comfort in normal mode while not detracting from the handling at all. In fact, the improvement in bumpy turns was a big leap over the factory setup. Hight speed float is gone as well. Now you can definitely feel a big jump between normal and sport more as well.
So far we are pretty impressed with what the DSC Sport controller can offer, it’s only going to be limited by the OEM dampers command authority. We were also surprised and the difference that we were able to make in a highly developed and engineered by the factory supercar that is a homologation special quasi race car. We didn’t like the clunky outdated windows 95ish interface that was not the easiest to use compared to modern stuff and we wish that the software could emulate so we could make tuning adjustments on the fly without having to write to the controller every time we wanted to make a change.
Stay tuned, we plan on switching to the 991.2’s stiffer spring rates and doing more tuning around that.
5 comments
I need to dig through this with notes and stuff but it’s really interesting getting an idea of the algorithm that the controller’s using. On the shock hardware side themselves, do you get the impression the stock Porsche dampers are functioning like the Tractive setup DSC offers, where it’s a solenoid bleed valve to tweak bypass flow around the piston shim stack? From hearing about issues with the magnetorheological shocks, I’ve always liked the idea of doing things this way more.
I know what OEMs are using it for and all but… looking at the way you can set up the DSC controller, do you think there’s good opportunities to set up a race car to gain lap time with something like this system compared to a well setup 3 way motorsports damper setup, or are some of the ways you’d do body control with dampers for a streetable setup just kind of crutching not enough spring rate?
I am pretty sure it’s a PWM solenoid controlling a bleed around the piston. The aftermarket Damptronic version is like that, there is the valve on top of the piston that controls the flow through the shaft.
thanks for the in depth descriptions. DSC doesnt do a great job in telling people how to use this thing. this will help in tuning my c7 z06. I have the dsc box on my car and it really is professional level software and tuning with a steep learning curve (and a bad software interface to boot) therefore the only changes i have made are to the tour and sport G comfort settings and left track mode completely alone.
They really don’t but once you get the hang of it, you can do a lot with it. How well does the magnaride respond to tuning inputs with the box?
This is a few years old, but was wondering if you had the resultant PDTS file lying around somewhere to use as a new baseline. As noted, the OOB settings need some love