<VV> Convertible damper canisters

[Chris & Bill Strickland]

'Cowl Shake', of some sort, is a problem in nearly all open cars 
(especially so in roadster style hot rods)  -- other than the hotrods, 
my personal experience is in my 356 hard top cabriolet, ie a convertible 
with a factory hardtop -- on a road trip, it is a completely different 
automobile with the hard top removed. So I expect some bright boy 
engineer at GM decided to attack the problem before it happened, 
possibly thinking of our friend Ralphie,  and designed the shakers with 
this in mind (before they had computer enhanced vibration analysis). I 
have no idea how successful the design was, as there are numerous 
reports of folks that have removed them without complaint.  Had the 
original design been better, I would expect one could notice a 
difference.  I drove a late model vert (66 Corsa 140) without the 
shakers briefly in my 'earlier years' and never felt I was missing 
anything except the top ...

would be nice to uncover the original engineering papers for the 
vibration analysis that lead to the shakers, but I expect that if it 
hasn't surfaced by now, it is long gone. remember, vibration/resonance 
science was in the dark ages until just recently -- note all the recent 
earthquake upgrading to bridges and buildings -- and, of course, to 
return to an automotive theme, there was 'Galloping Gertie' ...        
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bridge/meetsusp.html

Bill S