Fortune Auto Dreadnaught Pro Gen5 - anyone tried it on the track with feedbacks?

[bombardius]

I may not yet have the national championship to my name, but I've been autocrossing for about 5 years in a number of different cars. Last July I bought a BRZ and started building it for STX. I initially went with a full-blown Ground Control setup and had a moderate amount of success. The Toledo Pro was effectively a test&tune, and I finished mid-pack. This year, I picked Simmons as a co-driver (former national champ) and decided to get serious about the setup.

I was in contact with Fortune Auto as well as an MCS dealer weighing options. It may have just been bad luck, but I had trouble getting anyone from MCS on the phone. From a quality perspective (and price point) both MCS and Fortune were comparable. Both were able to re-valve to my specifications. What did it for me (personally) was my ability to get Terry (from Fortune) on the phone when I had questions.

I pulled the trigger and was very pleased with the results. At the two national events we've run the car, both my co-driver and I have finished in the trophies. This may be a place he's familiar, but this is a new thing for me. I've been very pleased with the Dreadnoughts.

If you're interested, you can follow our season: https://www.facebook.com/19stx

[solidONE]

^that is a very good endorsement for FA. I don't think vie read many negative reviews on their products. Tho that doesn't change the fact that their published shock dyno looks very strange, only truly digressive in certain levels of adjustment while progressive or some weird jagged combination of a digressive and progressive curve in other areas of adjustment.

[Jason@DSG]

Hey everyone,

As planned, here are the graphs from Fortune Auto that they made for me. This is a 2-way Dreadnought FRS/BRZ coil.


This first graph is a 2-way set on fully closed (stiffest setting) on both compression and rebound:





This second graph is a rebound sweep plot (showing the sweep for all the settings):





This second graph is a compression sweep plot (showing the sweep for all the settings):

[Jason@DSG]

Originally Posted by thinkdigit

DSG sounds very defensive but has no valuable data. Just opinions, which anyone at any level can do. I'm not an engineer by any means but I like reading all of CSG's posts. Very informative with real world knowledge.

I'd like to see DSG actually post up an actual dyno and explain reasoning behind it.

Now let's discuss real data. Left is stock and right is FA.



You don't have to be a suspension guru to know that both graphs similar. FA even at full stiff, at 2in/sec, there's less rebound than stock shocks. This probably will work, if they ran stock spring rates. This is probably why at highway speeds my friends STi bounces multiple times over bumps, like a cadillac.

Let me know if I'm wrong

See above, there's a significant difference over OEM

[solidONE]

So it looks pretty much like the generic graph they posted. The only times it resembles your typical digressive curve is with the compression adjuster fully open and the rebound adjuster fully closed ('blowing off' damping pressures at 1in/sec).

[fooddude]

When in doubt....get something else.

For me, I think it's a much safer and better bet to just go for the RCE T2. Or, if I wanted single adj, maybe the Mono Sport, HKS SP or Bilsteins.

Cut to the chase and buy quality to be on the safe side.

[CSG David]

Originally Posted by fooddude

When in doubt....get something else.

For me, I think it's a much safer and better bet to just go for the RCE T2. Or, if I wanted single adj, maybe the Mono Sport, HKS SP or Bilsteins.

Cut to the chase and buy quality to be on the safe side.

Actually it's, "When in doubt, go OEM."

[simpleisbest]

Originally Posted by Jason@DSG

Hey everyone,

As planned, here are the graphs from Fortune Auto that they made for me. This is a 2-way Dreadnought FRS/BRZ coil.

What spring rates were these dampers valved for?

[Shankenstein]

Originally Posted by CSG David

I wouldn't play with sway bars...those are essentially fine tuning items. I still think he can extract more speed with stock suspension.

While you're probably right about the driver mod (I need some of that myself), it's been shown that the sway bars do much more than fine-tuning.

Originally Posted by Wepeel

                                            Front  Rear
                                            Spring Spring
                                 Front Rear Roll   Roll
System    WRf    WRr     WRtot   Dist  Dist Share  Share
Config    (lb/in)(lb/in) (lb/in) (%)   (%)  (%)    (%)
---------------------------------------------------------
OEM BRZ     410   200    610   0.67   0.33  0.36  0.61
OEM FRS     373   212    585   0.64   0.36  0.30  0.63

WRf = Wheel Rate Front
WRr = Wheel Rate Rear
WRtot = WRf + WRr

The BRZ is overall about 4% stiffer than the FRS, but it is also more front biased. What the “Roll Share” columns are calculating is how much of the wheel rates in roll are due to the springs and bars (i.e. for the BRZ, in the front, the springs are providing 36% of the roll resistance, while the bar is providing the remaining 64% of the roll resistance – so ~2/3 of the roll resistance is coming from the bar). For the rears the springs are doing more work than the bar. If you run the calculations for front and rear combined, the bars are providing 56% of the total roll resistance for the BRZ and 58% for the FRS.

In roll, the sway bars contribute 70% of stiffness in the front and 37% in the rear. On most cars, mucking with the sway bars will help to direct the over/understeer bias... but in our case, we're entrenched in sway bar dynamics (atleast in roll, and before you start hitting bump stops).

[Jason@DSG]

Originally Posted by simpleisbest

What spring rates were these dampers valved for?

10k I believe

[CSG David]

Originally Posted by Shankenstein

While you're probably right about the driver mod (I need some of that myself), it's been shown that the sway bars do much more than fine-tuning.



In roll, the sway bars contribute 70% of stiffness in the front and 37% in the rear. On most cars, mucking with the sway bars will help to direct the over/understeer bias... but in our case, we're entrenched in sway bar dynamics (atleast in roll, and before you start hitting bump stops).

Yes it is important, but not as important for our application. For autocross however, they are pretty much essential to a winning setup vs. a non-competing setup. Rather than talking about setup, we'd like to see more driver involvement with driving rather than blaming their setup for being slow. In theory, sway bars do contribute to the overall suspension system, but everything works in harmony and in the greater picture of things, it's a lot smaller than you would expect.

[Shankenstein]

Originally Posted by CSG David

...it's a lot smaller than you would expect.

[fooddude]

Compare these 2 company overview videos and you decide which you want:



[ame]http://youtu.be/LpNgFI9HSsI[/ame]

Idk..but KW seems to be on a whole different level than FA... KW looks similar to Ohlins. All FA shows in the video is CADs of lower mount brackets and drilling them (very advanced and technical lol).

Makes me really want the RCE T2's now!!

[glamcem]

Originally Posted by fooddude

Compare these 2 company overview videos and you decide which you want:

Idk..but KW seems to be on a whole different level than FA... KW looks similar to Ohlins. All FA shows in the video is CADs of lower mount brackets and drilling them (very advanced and technical lol).

Makes me really want the RCE T2's now!!

so are you suggesting whoever makes the better video/editing automatically becomes better maker?