Seeing as the most expensive engines I've ever seen run ATI dampers as standard...can you elaborate?
Always had fantastic luck with ATI's on everything I've run (and just about everyone else I know in the drag world)
Great question. I asked the same.... ATI has a great marketing department and years with it. The founders have good relationships with a lot of "old School" rule makers and racers to keep their name sacred. Fluidamper had a good concept, but they lacked funding and promotional ability. They also had some manufacturing inconsistencies. About 4 years ago, they filed bankruptcy and another company, "Horchel Brothers", who builds OEM dampers for Cummins, John Deer, and a few other OEM manufactures saw the potential and purchased the company. About 2 years ago, they put some new tech into the company and have been working forward in development with the likes of NASCAR, INDY, some military vehicle builders, Chrysler, Ford, and Chevy due to ATI dampers not being able to keep up with the power levels some of the new cars are developing. Dodge Demon, for example, is looking to ditch ATI for the Fluidampr due to the ATI showing abnormal bearing wear on the crank. Fluidampr showed them that theirs works dynamically better in real world tests.
The long and short of it..
1. Everyday OEM, choose rubber because they want cheap and they want their cars to start degrading and not last forever (cant sell new if your engines run 200K miles like new). You'll likely not see ATI or another race-bread company name here.
2. Engine bulders dont want to spend $100 more on a damper when A. Customers "think" ATI is the greatest on earth from what they see all over the place and, B. They want to keep building engines (apply a measure of "good enough" here).
3. Fluidamper is the only damper that you don't need to "tune" to your power output. If you make 500 or 1000HP, your one size fits all until you start changing your crank length, number of pistons etc. ATI and others need to be "designed" for the application.
4. Zero maintenance. Rubber wears out and gets hard. You have to replace it (the rubber) frequently to keep it supple and still perform consistently.
I think you will be seeing more Fluidampr in the near future. They have a long way to go to build the name back, but they are doing it by proving it and not buying an internet of advertising. Apparently, they have instead invested in some very high end equipment to develop in the last couple years and have been putting it to use. As an example, the #5 bearing on Callies Dragon Slayer cranks has a reputation of eating bearings. Callies worked very hard to improve the rigidity of the crank through metallurgy. However, It turns out that at certain harmonic frequencies, the ATI on the one they tested couldn't absorb the harmonics well, so they made sure theirs could.... The one I have on my engine. (FYI, I don't have that crank, but not for that reason specifically). When you buy a damper, your not buying performance, you are buying protection... "How long" is the factor you have as a variable to work with. In my personal research, you can rank them and this one is at the top.
