Admittedly there may be no real need for a hydraulic damper on a Brampton, but I feel the ride could be more smoothly with it and less judder/flutter than with the old friction system that you do not want to set too tight to avoid producing hexagonal or octogonal lines around basically smooth round corners - as was just confirmed by Bill while writing this. At € 30.- from China and a couple of rewarding and nice hours in your workshop this is no big deal anyway. There was a word about providing some extra backlash in a friction damper set for better straight line steering - I would better not do this on purpose, believing that some free motion may lead to flutter and even to a fierce wobble . Backlash here is likely not desirable but simply worn out components.
Mac also just confirmed my experiment from a few days ago when I fabricated an alu lever with said 57mm between centres to use most of the available stroke, I started with 53 mm and revised it with no. 2 lever. In past hours I studied some more damper installations on youtube but as I said, at my very first sight ever of an across damper in Norman´s design I really could not figure out how that behaved at the critical position around neutral straight ahead direction. By now I think it does not matter much in real life in his and my setup which one to choose. One has to look at ways to mount the kit on your particular bike to find out what suits best without collisions of components.
While having been unable to figure out how Norman´s concept worked I came to the - for me- more obvious design with a simple alu lever cum cylinder at 90 degrees to the rod at neutral . And still I think , even considering some second lever effect in academic view in there, that effect is more or less to be ignored at these critical +/- 5-10 degrees from neutral. Any trigonometric effect from this second lever influence is of minimal practical consequence on the road - or at least not worthwhile to care for. There is more bonus to have from the offset clamp in the China kit like finding more space in end positions due to that offset.
Mac, could you post some photo of your setup for studies ? Sorry for not supplying numbers of stroke versus steering rotation, I have no bearings yet for the steering lug, resp. lug not yet machined for taper rollers on stock.
Vic
Youtube clip version Vic:
damper concept Brampton