DSCSport V3 Controller now compatible with factory OEM shocks

[bassplayrr]

I just might be willing to be the (pay to play) guinea pig here (at least for a TA/street setup), but my last lingering question remains the functionally of the OEM mode selection buttons. Do these become obsolete with the new setup or are they mapped in some way (say, street = DSC and track = track, or street = street and track = DSC)?

[Dr.Ron]

I believe he said there are 2 maps, one for street mode and one for track mode, so the buttons retain their functionality.

[SilveRT8]

Hi DSC,
Just sent you a PM to order a V3 Controller for my black '16 TA 2.0 group.
Hoping to receive it in time for my next track day at Mt-Tremblant, QC on May 23 along with my good friend Bruce H who will be there also so he can test and review the Track set-up.
With the rough Quebec roads and 2 hour drive to the track, I'll be glad to review the Street setting also.
Just had a cold track day at Tremblant yesterday, from 32F am to 54F pm, notice the snow left on the Ski slopes of the back mountains !

[Bruce H.]

Hi DSC,
Just sent you a PM to order a V3 Controller for my black '16 TA 2.0 group.

That's awesome...glad to see someone step-up! Even minor improvements could justify the cost of the unit and it will be fun to help identify them.

Bruce

[Topplayer]

Looking forward to the results SilveRT8 and Bruce!

[darbgnik]

I can envision the improvement here, and I have the full tractive suspension. Whereas the factory controller may toggle between street and race here and there, this controller will toggle each corner independently. As well as front or back. It doesn't take too much imagination to see the benefit......

[sharmut]

Whereas the factory controller may toggle between street and race here and there, this controller will toggle each corner independently. As well as front or back. It doesn't take too much imagination to see the benefit......

Are you certain the OE programming doesn't control the secondary valves per corner? if someone can get the CANBUS ID I will reach out to Racelogic to see if they can add it to the Viper database and can log it via VBOX HD2 to confirm.

[DSCSport]

I just might be willing to be the (pay to play) guinea pig here (at least for a TA/street setup), but my last lingering question remains the functionally of the OEM mode selection buttons. Do these become obsolete with the new setup or are they mapped in some way (say, street = DSC and track = track, or street = street and track = DSC)?

Hi Bassplayrr, No you do not lose the functionality. You can still use the buttons inside the cabin to toggle between modes, but your modes will have different maps and will behave differently. The tuning software we provide lets you modify the map or you can use the map we ship with the unit.

[DSCSport]

We have just released the Calibration file for the Base shocks and the Tractive shocks for the Viper. If you have the DSCsport software (which is free) you can download the file and load it and see how the map works. Fairly straight forward to understand.

[Dr.Ron]

Hi DSC,
Just sent you a PM to order a V3 Controller for my black '16 TA 2.0 group.
Hoping to receive it in time for my next track day at Mt-Tremblant, QC on May 23 along with my good friend Bruce H who will be there also so he can test and review the Track set-up.
With the rough Quebec roads and 2 hour drive to the track, I'll be glad to review the Street setting also.
Just had a cold track day at Tremblant yesterday, from 32F am to 54F pm, notice the snow left on the Ski slopes of the back mountains !

Are they doing that for you?

[SilveRT8]

Are they doing that for you?

Yesss!
Tom from DSC called me to answer my questions, and he confirmed that the the unit comes with 2 base maps loaded, one for Street and one for Race that we can toggle from the dash buttons same as the OEM unit. He said that the Controller reacts to the G force inputs it receives with smoother transition in Street mode and sharper or faster ones in Race mode.
Unit was in stock and they would ship Fedex today, so I should receive it in a few days providing there is no delay with Can/US Customs.
I'll report shortly about the Street setting and next wednesday at the Tremblant track with my good friend Bruce H.
I'm back to being a Kid waiting to get that special Xmas gift !

[Dr.Ron]

Awesome news!
Will you let Bruce try it out on the track in his car so we have multiple experiences and opinions for comparison?

Ron

[sharmut]

Yes, Bruce H is very familiar with the OE TA behavior and make a great test candidate.

[SilveRT8]

Awesome news!
Will you let Bruce try it out on the track in his car so we have multiple experiences and opinions for comparison?

Ron

Yes, that's the plan ! He'll be the best to review the Track setting

[Bruce H.]

Yes, that's the plan ! He'll be the best to review the Track setting

Awesome! I'm sure we'll notice a variety of subtle performance differences. There are a couple of pretty specific ones on track that we're both hoping for so this is going to be very interesting. If it addresses them I'll consider the unit an unqualified success that allows the retaining of the stock dampers, and the same if it improves rough road comfort!

[sharmut]

Awesome! I'm sure we'll notice a variety of subtle performance differences. There are a couple of pretty specific ones on track that we're both hoping for so this is going to be very interesting. If it addresses them I'll consider the unit an unqualified success that allows the retaining of the stock dampers, and the same if it improves rough road comfort!

Perhaps I'm wrong, the TA OE damper is NOT the B16 damptronic, which uses a secondary valve with variable opening, offering some granularity to the level of stiffness. If I understood how the Viper damptronic works, the secondary valve is a toggle and isn't open unless controller believes the damper needs to be stiffened. In most cases on road, with the controller set to street mode, that secondary valve is closed and would not expect a change in the softness of the ride. If the DSC controller does improve the on-road ride, that would be fantastic and could open options to use a stiffer spring rates without killing the ride quality.
On-track wonder if the DSC Controller calibration is better at handling the vehicle weight transitions to keep the car better planted. Like you I prefer the OE street setting on-track and let the controller decide when to open the secondary valve to stiffen the damper. Curious if the DSC calibration reduces the dive during hard braking and mitigate the ABS behavior with rear-end wiggle during braking from 140+mph.

[Topplayer]

Perhaps I'm wrong, the TA OE damper is NOT the B16 damptronic, which uses a secondary valve with variable opening, offering some granularity to the level of stiffness. If I understood how the Viper damptronic works, the secondary valve is a toggle and isn't open unless controller believes the damper needs to be stiffened. In most cases on road, with the controller set to street mode, that secondary valve is closed and would not expect a change in the softness of the ride. If the DSC controller does improve the on-road ride, that would be fantastic and could open options to use a stiffer spring rates without killing the ride quality.
On-track wonder if the DSC Controller calibration is better at handling the vehicle weight transitions to keep the car better planted. Like you I prefer the OE street setting on-track and let the controller decide when to open the secondary valve to stiffen the damper. Curious if the DSC calibration reduces the dive during hard braking and mitigate the ABS behavior with rear-end wiggle during braking from 140+mph.

Interesting thought, if the DSC will settle the rear end during high speed breaking it would be worth it for that alone!

[Bruce H.]

Perhaps I'm wrong, the TA OE damper is NOT the B16 damptronic, which uses a secondary valve with variable opening, offering some granularity to the level of stiffness. If I understood how the Viper damptronic works, the secondary valve is a toggle and isn't open unless controller believes the damper needs to be stiffened. In most cases on road, with the controller set to street mode, that secondary valve is closed and would not expect a change in the softness of the ride. If the DSC controller does improve the on-road ride, that would be fantastic and could open options to use a stiffer spring rates without killing the ride quality.
On-track wonder if the DSC Controller calibration is better at handling the vehicle weight transitions to keep the car better planted. Like you I prefer the OE street setting on-track and let the controller decide when to open the secondary valve to stiffen the damper. Curious if the DSC calibration reduces the dive during hard braking and mitigate the ABS behavior with rear-end wiggle during braking from 140+mph.

That's the essence of how the dampers work I believe, the limitations of having just 2 valve modes, and why there's great interest in how much and it what ways performance can be improved by altering the method of their control.

DSC knows their stuff, and it'll be interesting to experience whatever subtle improvements they've been able to provide and to have multiple users give their feedback. I've found the TA's track performance to be absolutely stunning, with just brakes needing beefing up for aggressive sessions with Castrol fluid and Raybestos track pads resolving that. The rear wiggle is unnerving until you become comfortable and confident with it, and I don't see the DSC affecting it.

If I had to identify one thing I'd like to improve on the car my first, last, only, and continuing criticism is the damper's overly aggressive valving in Race Mode. I thought that the first time I tracked it and still do. Despite the car being such an incredible performer, tweaking that even slightly could eliminate that single criticism. If the controller somehow manages to improve street manners that would be a bonus but I don't actually have any issues with that given the high performance nature of the car.

Fingers crossed,

Bruce

[One Viper Bite]

That's the essence of how the dampers work I believe, the limitations of having just 2 valve modes, and why there's great interest in how much and it what ways performance can be improved by altering the method of their control.

DSC knows their stuff, and it'll be interesting to experience whatever subtle improvements they've been able to provide and to have multiple users give their feedback. I've found the TA's track performance to be absolutely stunning, with just brakes needing beefing up for aggressive sessions with Castrol fluid and Raybestos track pads resolving that. The rear wiggle is unnerving until you become comfortable and confident with it, and I don't see the DSC affecting it.

If I had to identify one thing I'd like to improve on the car my first, last, only, and continuing criticism is the damper's overly aggressive valving in Race Mode. I thought that the first time I tracked it and still do. Despite the car being such an incredible performer, tweaking that even slightly could eliminate that single criticism. If the controller somehow manages to improve street manners that would be a bonus but I don't actually have any issues with that given the high performance nature of the car.

Fingers crossed,

Bruce

Reasons why I started this thread ^

After my tracking experience at NVE3 2 weeks ago, my criticism of the Race Mode was only further solidified. It makes the car too twitchy and less confidence inspiring, especially when dealing with bumps and dips.

I'm much more comfortable in Street Mode on both canyons and the track. However, my criticism of the Street Mode is that the nose dives really aggressively on heavy braking. Couple that with the rear-end wiggle that I still don't trust so I find myself braking much earlier and not as hard, and I find that I don't have a set up currently that I feel really comfortable with (granted my GTC is completely stock and on regular P-Zeros).

If this controller yields any improvement at all on any of the issues above, I think it would be worth the money.

[TA Two Oh]

Bruce, like a lot of people, I'm looking forward to your feedback. I know that it will be honest, detailed and accurate. SilveRT8... thank you for making this happen! I've followed this thread closely, as I have friends with the full Tractive DSC setup and they love it. Hopefully this new controller will allow those of us on more restricted budgets to enjoy at least part of the benefits of the full Tractive setup.

I felt compelled to post at this time because I'm hoping to offer some constructive criticism on how this product was launched, with a view to assisting the vendor for when their next product is introduced. I truly believe that if the feedback that Bruce is about to give was available from the start, DSC would be working overtime to keep up with orders, rather than having to try to clean up 7 pages of posts relating to misinformation. Much of this has already been covered, but with 7 pages already, I'm hoping to summarize in one post. Also, I ran some numbers on one particular claim that made me extremely suspicious and I believe I've proved it to be not only false, but ridiculously so.

Before I begin, I'd like to give a thankful shout out to ALL of the Suppliers and Vendors that support this forum. I'm grateful for the ability to buy parts and upgrades. And now that Dodge no longer build our cars, a company like Prefix is a fantastic source for us; they're the closest thing we have to a factory.

Now, for the criticism.

I cut and pasted this today from the DSC Sport Website:

DSCSport V3 ControllerScreen Shot 2018-04-18 at 10.47.29 AM
Available for all viper models fitted with PASM, the V3 Controller is a simple Plug N Play controller that replaces the factory PASM controller, offering both improved track performance and street comfort.

No Viper has Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM). So, according to your website, your product will not work in any Viper. You need to re-write that bit immediately.

This new shock controller module from DSC/tractive only works on cars that have current magnetic ride suspension! (Scott@Prefix)

As already pointed out, no Viper comes with magnetic ride suspension.

Please re-read the post:
This new shock controller module from DSC/tractive only works on cars that have current magnetic ride suspension! (Scott@Prefix)

Scott... telling us to re-read your post won't swap our suspension into one with magnetic ride, no matter how many times we do so.

If you have two buttons on the bottom of your center stack that say "track" and "street" it is a active suspension. Look at the coil overs on your car, if it has wires coming out the end of the coil over it is an active suspension.
Inside of this coil over is fluid with metal particles, the controller regulates the magnet on the piston thickening/thinning the oil in microseconds, and therefore changes the compression/rebound damping rates.
(Scott@ Prefix)

Not true with regard to the metal particles and magnet, as already pointed out.



the race mode is awesome, and the street mode is a much softer almost bouncy ride compared to stock. (Scott!Prefix)

Awesome means absolutely nothing, and nobody wants a bouncy ride.

I think our Targa mule car is a GTSR and we have tested it on the street not on the track, in race mode the suspension is stiff, car feels good, steers good, and remains flat. On a almost 360 degree freeway entrance ramp we could go 25 mph faster than with the stock suspension.

Been both passenger and driver.

Scott@Prefix

This really, really irked me. Intuitively I KNEW that a shock controller could not possibly add 25 MPH to any car's maximum speed through a corner in any street situation. It's not physically possible. So I crunched some numbers to support my position.

Since I had nothing to go on beyond that it was an "almost 360 degree corner" and that with the controller the car was able to be driven 25 MPH faster, I had to come up with a couple of representative scenarios. I believe that I've done so ... they're certainly close enough examples to be meaningful. I rounded off some numbers here and there to make calculating easier, but that did not affect the outcome. One caveat -it's been 40 years since I took any physics (High School... yup, I'm OLD!) so I'd welcome others to review my calculations and advise me of any errors.

Assume that our cars stock cornering capability is about 1 g sustained. I began with a hypothetical "loop around" on-ramp that could be taken at a maximum speed of 50 MPH at 1 g and calculated the g's necessary to increase that speed by 25 MPH, to 75 MPH. Taking that same corner at 75 MPH means pulling an average of 2.25 g's. That's a level normally associated with purpose-built race cars on slicks. No shock controller could ever begin to make that much of a difference.

But perhaps 50 MPH is too slow a starting speed; at 1.0 g that equates to a corner with a radius of only 167 feet. So I recalculated everything using a 1.0 g cornering speed of 100 MPH. Obviously, a 25 MPH gain from 100 MPH is only a 25% speed improvement, compared to the 50% improvement from the first example. At 1 g and 100 MPH, you'd be on an "almost 360 degree" freeway entrance ramp with a radius of 669 feet. That's a long, gradual ramp. To take the same ramp at 125 MPH would mean pulling 1.56 G's. Being able to go from cornering at 1 g to cornering at 1.56 g's by simply swapping out a shock controller makes no sense.

What about the effect of downforce, since the test car was a GTSR? So, perhaps thanks to aero, at 100 MPH the car in stock form is pulling 1.25 g's. I ran the same calculations and in order to go 25% faster, it ends up pulling a sustained acceleration (cornering force) of 1.95 g's on a ramp with a radius of 534 feet. I just can't see that being possible.

Keep in mind that due to space limitations, freeway entrance ramps like we're examining tend to have a sharply decreasing radius at the end, which would increase the delta between g's pulled in stock form, and g's pulled travelling 25 MPH faster. And if the "25 MPH faster" comparison was actually in a car with the full Tractive setup I missed that; I've assumed we were talking about improvements with the new controller. Improvements with the full Tractive setup aren't particularly meaningful and I still doubt that changing a controller and shocks could result in gains of .56 to 1.25 g's on a freeway entrance ramp.

I realize that much of what I've written has already been covered. But unless I missed it, I didn't see any retraction or correction from Prefix and frankly, they were the source of the bulk of the misinformation. Scott, I do really appreciate you posting the PDF on how the factory street/ track mode works; that was fantastic. Thank you! I'm sure that you have a TON of valuable information to share so please keep posting.

Bruce... can't wait for your review. (Data logging would be extremely helpful too) if it's as positive as we all expect, DSC can expect a flood of orders!

My calculations:
IMG_2045.jpg
IMG_2046.jpg
IMG_2047.jpg

[Bruce H.]

Bruce... can't wait for your review. (Data logging would be extremely helpful too) if it's as positive as we all expect, DSC can expect a flood of orders!

Hey Doug, I do hope to data log but when I previously tried at Circuit Mont Tremblant the logging failed, perhaps it couldn't get a GPS lock in the mountains or something. I just got the car out of winter storage today and will check the logger's operation locally. I suspect logs could minimize the benefits as Claude and I will be swapping the DSC unit between our two TA's and might not have the time to extract the full potential of any performance gains in such a short period, especially if being held up by track traffic. Improved feel, control and driver confidence is what I'm looking for initially and know gains will follow.

This track has two sections that clearly highlight the short-comings of the stock damper valving (that others have commented on here as well) and even a small improvement is going to be a night and day thing. I just hope DSC got their base map dialed in because the rear skittishness and lack of grip in quick transitions and under heavy throttle are the performance issues that need to be addressed, and that their manipulating of the stock valving is most likely able to address I would think. Ride comfort will be a priority for some, and I hope to be surprised by a noticeable improvement there. Any testing suggestions from DSC would be most welcome.

And I'm impressed with your hard-core physics analysis! What a great memory from your school days and I half wonder if you even needed a calculator, lol.

Bruce

[sharmut]

Hi Bruce,

Can't wait for your feedback. Do you plan to run with CORSA or have you switched to CUP2?

[Bruce H.]

Hi Sharmut, I'm still loving the Corsa. From what I've been told repeatedly by users the Cup2 heat cycles out fairly quickly. They'd surely be a little quicker initially but the Corsa has always gone the full distance for me and they've proven their worth many times on wet roads and tracks. And if they're good enough for the McLaren 720S...

[AZTVR]

I felt compelled to post at this time because I'm hoping to offer some constructive criticism on how this product was launched, with a view to assisting the vendor for when their next product is introduced.

What I got out of your post was that the bulk of it had nothing to do with DSC; but, one of their potential retail outlets. I definitely agree that DSC's use of the term "PASM" was confusing to me; although, I figured that they must be using it as a generic term. It is interesting that DSC was criticized early on in this thread for adding information and then criticized by others for not adding enough information quickly enough.

[TA Two Oh]

True