These will put a damper on things

What you see in the top image are a crankshaft damper and four smaller dampers for cams, laid out in a pattern mimicking their real orientation in the supercar where they usually reside. Crank shafts and cam shafts twist and rebound slightly as they rotate, and the resulting torsional vibration can wear out bearings and do other nasty things. Dampers eliminate the problem. These devices, from Vibratech TVD, use viscous damping where a viscous silicone fluid sits between a precision machined and balanced inertia ring and its outer housing, as seen in the cutaway. In addition to supercars, you can find these dampers in heavy industrial and marine equipment. The alternative technology is a rubber damping element placed between the two metal parts of a pulley. The problem with the rubber damper approach, according to the folks at the Vibratech booth, is eventual deterioration and a much narrower peak frequency range. www.vibratechtvd.com

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