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Originally Posted by mazspeed
You have a long way to go to prove this. I have driven 1 properly built air ride car on a track and it was acceptable as a performance upgrade to anything out nowadays. If this was the case, then why don't professional race teams use it. Is the product good for the street, yes. Is it good for light duty autocrossing, a little, but in no way in it's present form, remotely close to anything out there for after market performance suspensions.
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First...yes, I own Air Ride Technologies. As I have said on other forums, not trying to hide my motives, just trying to avoid the shameless self promotion.
Second...I agree completely that we have a long way to go to prove the merits of a properly designed and tuned air suspension, especially since the path is littered with many components and installers whose definition of performance is a bit different that most of us on this forum.
The only limitations of an air suspension that I have found so far are the limits of our ability to develop new components and applications fast enough. Only so many hours in the day. As with any product or technology, new or not, continuing refinement and development is the key to making progress. Winning racers rarely find 50 horsepower at one time...they find it in 3 hp increments. I think that is kind of where we are at right now. The easy fiields have been plowed...reliability, durability, model applications, basic design parameters, etc, have all been well documented. Now we are refining electronic ride height systems, multistage shock adjustability, airspring piston profiles, etc.
Why don't racers use air suspension? Well, some do. There will be several at Bonneville next month...including the editor of Hotrod Magazine in a 2nd gen Camaro, Trepaniers newest creation, a 68 Barracuda with a 1300hp 4 cyl, and a flatehead powered streamliner. We have worked with a couple of NASCAR teams [no, I can't say who] and are headfirst into a major development program for a miliary application. We ahve also worked with a number of drag racers who are using the ShockWaves as a very useful traction tuning tool...as well as being handy for loading the car in the trailer
. The real reason most racers don't use ANY adjustable suspension is simply because it is against the rules in many sanctioning bodies. At that point most teams won't waste any resources to persue a technology that they won't be allowed to use anyhow.
I am seriously encouraged by the debate on these forums...it inspires new product development and increased education and training for our customers. In other words...it gets me off my dead ass. Personally, I hope threads like this last forever!
BTW...I don't get the chance to lurk on these forums as much as I would like, so don't take a non-response as anything negative...I'm just off doing other stuff.