Downamics

World cup level data acquisition & analysis service available for every level of racer & rider who wants to go faster & find the optimum setup.

09/08/2025

Curiosity got the better of me and I used a combination of the , .bike and a ratchet strap to measure the actual wheel to shock displacement ratio.
Although very similar, the theoretical/simulated figures from software do vary slightly from the numbers I measured. There is a small amount of error for the method I've used, but the average difference shows +8.4% for the simulated figures which is an average of 1.14mm.

01/08/2025

I've been getting stuck into some testing and development work recently.
I've been testing the floating brake arm, brake temperature measuring and validation and the new tool for accurately measuring sag as well as actual amount of rear wheel travel, which can also help to accurately measure leverage ratio too 📉
The floating brake arm has been a work in progress, which I was expecting, and has been amazing with advice and even different parts such as a longer arm and different rod ends. Plenty of learning with this one.
I've been developing the .bike by adding an IR temperature sensor which has involved new firmware from Syn and some extra analysis tools.
The introduction of the temperature sensor has also led me down the route of developing my own dashboard/software with the goal of being as efficient as possible in a race situation 🤓
More on that can be found on the Patreon.
I've also now done a couple of DH sessions on the cranks, which made a big difference on how I can move on the bike, as well as love the bike under me. Having the hips in a position which is more parallel to the shoulders helps to feel more stable on the bike, able to load the contact points more and improved cornering, especially left handers. Being left foot forward, having the leading foot slightly closer to trailing foot and straightening out the hips meant that I could rotate the hips more to help the cornering. That's my feelings anyway, as well being significantly stiffer and better under load, whether that's a harsh landing like th Boomslang drop or sprinting.

There's loads going on at the moment so I'll get back on the socials and share what I'm up to.

06/07/2025

I've been developing some bespoke tools to analyse the floating brake arm.
In order to know the brake arm is working, I need to know when the rear brake is pulled, and ideally the amount of pressure the brake is being applied, the shock behaviour and how the frame is moving. There is a "control run", with no brake arm and then a run with the brake arm installed.
The first graph is actually a series of graphs based on each braking event, so you can see how long the brake event is and what the frame and shock are doing during that event. There's more work to do here with synchronising the events based on location on track but it's quite useful outside of the brake arm testing too.
Then we can see rear wheel movement (along the axle path, not vertically, thanks to the .bike Linkage software) during rear braking in each run and the chassis pitch angular accelerations during rear brake application and a combination of chassis vertical acceleration and rear wheel displacement.
I need to do more testing in different locations and types of terrain but I'm starting to correlate this data with the theoretical anti-rise curves for the Sego with and without the brake arm.

More work to do but it's a lot of fun figuring out different ways to analyse the data and see which methods work and which ones don't, but lead you somewhere else.

01/07/2025

There were a lot of responses, but only one right answer!

This is the Sub Tank.
It enables your air spring to behave in a speed sensitive manner rather than the typical position/load sensitive characteristic.

The system can be adjusted to control when the tank is engaged and the progression curve of the air spring; similar to volume spacers or a third air chamber, but using shaft speed to determine when that progression curve is utilised.

Oh no....more testing to do 😜

Big thanks to for sending this one to me and giving me the heads up on it.

23/06/2025

I asked, you answered...so here's an update on what I'm currently testing.
Some of these things are a long term test and others are quite new.

First up is the coil sprung Dorado: As part of the shakedown ride with the brake arm, I got the spring rate in a better place. Initial impressions are good, with better support in the mid stroke, more grip and more confidence in the front end. Coupled with the damper, it seems to be my favourite configuration at the moment.
it spherical bushings for the shock: hard to say at the moment as the fitment on EXT shocks is extremely tight in comparison to the Fox shock I've run them on before.

prototype lateral mass damper: this was an idea I put to Nathan, and he got some made up for testing. Even on a gearbox box bike there is a quantifiable improvement in frequency damping and lateral stability. Keen to try it on a "normal" bike...just need a frame 😞

Brake cooling: this requires the addition of a temperature sensor to the .bike system. The hardware is ready, the firmware is on the way. So along with the brake duct (which doesn't fit the brake arm) and phase change materials/thermal compounds, we'll see if braking temps can be optimised.

The floating brake arm: shakedown test went well, everything works as it should. Some noticeable changes under lighter braking but need to go somewhere with heavier braking zones and data on. The arm can be changed in terms of length and mounting location but the current fitment gives the anti-rise characteristics I think will benefit the
I used data from my test track to understand where in the suspension stroke I'm doing most of my braking and designed the arm to suit that (as well as the limited mounted options on the Sego). Big thanks to for getting it designed and made for me.

The Magic Mary: it's not new but I have got some quantifiable analysis to show the differences in behaviour from a normal tyre and a radial tyre with comparable pressures, so now I want to see how a different brand will compare and further test the processing and maths.

28/05/2025

Getting stuck in to the analysis of the data collected from testing the Internal Wind Management system 🫤 I cobbled together.
The idea behind it being that it equalises the air that gets trapped in the upper legs to improve the consistency of the behaviour and give a more linear feel to the fork, with improved support in the mid stroke and increased use of the deeper part of the stroke.
The difference is subtle but noticeable on the bike, which aligns with the data. The fork feels more sensitive in the initial part of the stroke and the LSC circuit, which also feels like the front end has more grip. The travel usage is more linear and smoother than without the IWM device, which leads to a feeling of increased support at around 80-100mm of displacement.
It's not black and white and I want to do more testing to investigate it further with improved analysis tools, but it feels like an improvement, the data from the .bike shows changes in how the fork works and the times are faster ✊
More to come.

27/05/2025

A huge part of understanding how a bike is working is understanding what the human element is doing at the same time. The bike and the rider make up 2 parts of, what I refer to as "The System" which also includes the 3rd element, the track or terrain.
This kind of video analysis, courtesy of , which maps the riders skeletal position and movements on the bike, is a great way to visualise the weight distribution, limb movements and mass stability.
It's not easy to look as good as in his new kit, but when you can see how his body works on the bike thanks to tools like this, it opens up plenty of opportunities to help him go faster too.

26/05/2025

Brilliant weekend at with helping him get faster on his new rig.
Lots of changes made, lots of things tried and now he's heading to Loudenvielle and throw it down.
Huge thanks to for all the support and providing the MX coverage.

06/05/2025

I did a solid day on the bike on Sunday with the goal of getting some data from the sensors on a trail I know pretty well. 7 runs and loads of pretty interesting insights to get stuck into. I already have gigabytes of data from this trail, including braking, so I'm curious to see how the 2 different methods of measuring braking inputs compare. The Brake Ace will give me a lot more information as the current brake data I have is simply a digital "on/off", but with some magic I can delve a little deeper, however this is much more akin to the Stendec brake pressure data I stated off with.

I'll be doing a full breakdown of it all on the Patreon this week.

04/05/2025

The relationship between the rear triangle and the front triangle is one that I find really interesting. Specifically this is in reference to the rear axle and the BB/gearbox (crank axle). Depending on the chassis material (s), distance apart, linkage, torque numbers for the linkage pivots, shock type, shock construction and wheel construction, this means that the accelerations, rotations and frequencies at each datum point are unique to that particular system. It's almost like it's the chassis' fingerprint.
If you also take into account the rider weight, the distribution of that weight and riding characteristics, the plot thickens even further.
The reason that this particular relationship is not only fascinating but also crucial to understand is because it's a key factor in determining how the bike can feel. This is in terms of handling but also feedback, grip, compliance and rider fatigue and cognitive load.
Because of the amount of variables that contribute to this characteristic, it does mean that there are ways to tune this to help get a chassis which has a different operational window. It can be as drastic as cutting parts of the frame out (as I did on my Commencal and a few others) to changing parts completely (Amuary's steel chain stays) through to changing from a coil shock to an air shock, or experimenting with wheel construction (although this is another rabbit hole).
The first step is being able to measure this relationship and quantify it with data, otherwise, as is always the case when you don't use data, you're just guessing!

16/04/2025

I've been working on the correlation between suspension speed and position in relation to axle acceleration for a number of reasons. Firstly because I don't think linear potentiometers are suitable for this application, being an expensive consumable part. Another reason is that they're a point of failure, which is rare, but entirely possible and the last reason is that they're visually and aurally intrusive, which can be a factor in the rider's cognitive load. You can argue that this is applicable to the entire system to a degree, however, the more these systems are run, the more familiar and less intrusive they become, but the other factors remain. There are other options such as string or wire pots which counteract the sensory issues to a degree, but they are still prone to ingesting dirt and water which increases wear and tear as well as the chance of mechanical failure.

With the .bike system I would run what I referred to as a "quali trim" or "race trim", where the linear pots were removed, leaving the system with no moving parts, additional sounds and minimal impact to the rider's senses and headspace.

However, doing this does remove key metrics from the data, so being able to correlate how axle accelerations and suspension speed and position work together will negate this to some degree. The ability to process the raw data externally or create maths channels inside the DAQ software help with this. Also, by the point of a quali run or race run, the bulk of the work should have been done, and then it's a case of understanding how much harder a rider pushes on these key runs and what they need the bike to do in order to go faster. That does mean that the learnings from these 2 runs are probably some of the most important.

As with a lot of aspects of bike setup and performance, it's a game of compromises, and when you improve something, there's a likelihood that change will have an effect somewhere else, so you need to weigh up the possible gains versus the possible losses, which includes what data sets you will or won't have available

08/04/2025

I found this quite interesting, I was studying the damping speeds and characteristics when the bike was landing after a jump which highlighted axle oscillations at the same time.
The top graph shows the front wheel displacement in purple and front axle acceleration in blue, the middle graph shows rear wheel displacement in orange and rear axle acceleration is red and the last graph shows front and rear wheel displacement together.

The damping in the fork is doing a better job of isolating these oscillations from the sprung mass, whereas the shock is still being affected by the rear axle oscillations, albeit the rear axle accelerations are larger. The rear axle accelerations reach the sensors max of ±32g (shown by the clipping/flat sections of the graph) and front axle shows no clipping. The amount of clipping also shows that the peak accelerations were well in excess of ±32g which could explain why the shock had a much harder time damping these accelerations. The damping speeds are pretty well balanced but the amount of displacement is different, and ~0.04 seconds difference in time the wheels landed again, these are just observations at this point).

I'm going to dive into this a bit more and investigate the accelerations on different axes as well and see what the chassis is doing as this may highlight some other causes and effects of these axle accelerations.

Address

Andover

Website

http://www.downamics.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Downamics posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.