[bigscore]

I just had a set of MSS adjustable springs installed on my 2018 G30 M Sport 540xi. The install took about 5 hours to complete.

The ride is such a big improvement over stock. Over bumps the car remains composed yet firm and comfortable.

Right now I'm break in period while the springs settle. After a few days of letting the springs settle it's back to the shop for final adjustments and a wheel alignment.

If your on the fence about the MSS kit I'd say stop hesitating and go for it!

If you live in NY and are looking for a shop that deals with rims/rim repair/suspensions/alignments and great pricing for top notch work I'd recommend "Intrack Tire".

You can find them on Instagram and have a look at the work they do.

https://www.instagram.com/intrack/

The weather has been terrible but I attached 2 quick pics of my car. This is the car about 4 days after install and no final adjustments made.

[SctsOut06]

Originally Posted by bigscore

I just had a set of MSS adjustable springs installed on my 2018 G30 M Sport 540xi. The install took about 5 hours to complete.

The ride is such a big improvement over stock. Over bumps the car remains composed yet firm and comfortable.

Right now I'm break in period while the springs settle. After a few days of letting the springs settle it's back to the shop for final adjustments and a wheel alignment.

If your on the fence about the MSS kit I'd say stop hesitating and go for it!

If you live in NY and are looking for a shop that deals with rims/rim repair/suspensions/alignments and great pricing for top notch work I'd recommend "Intrack Tire".

You can find them on Instagram and have a look at the work they do.

The weather has been terrible but I attached 2 quick pics of my car. This is the car about 4 days after install and no final adjustments made.

Looks absolutely gorgeous!

[bigscore]

Originally Posted by SctsOut06

Looks absolutely gorgeous!

Thank You Sir !

[PetieD 7]

Originally Posted by bigscore

I just had a set of MSS adjustable springs installed on my 2018 G30 M Sport 540xi. The install took about 5 hours to complete.

The ride is such a big improvement over stock. Over bumps the car remains composed yet firm and comfortable.

Right now I'm break in period while the springs settle. After a few days of letting the springs settle it's back to the shop for final adjustments and a wheel alignment.

If your on the fence about the MSS kit I'd say stop hesitating and go for it!

If you live in NY and are looking for a shop that deals with rims/rim repair/suspensions/alignments and great pricing for top notch work I'd recommend "Intrack Tire".

You can find them on Instagram and have a look at the work they do.

https://www.instagram.com/intrack/

The weather has been terrible but I attached 2 quick pics of my car. This is the car about 4 days after install and no final adjustments made.

Does your vehicle come with an adaptive suspension, or regular suspension system?

[bigscore]

M-Sport adaptive suspension (Sport Plus, Sport, Comfort, Eco)

[540iSUP]

Looks good. I like how you closed up that wheel gap. I've been on the fence with lowering springs; I want to make sure I get a drop lower than stock Msport springs.

[gtenedio]

update: hows the ride quality? is it significantly harsher? any bounce?

[bigscore]

Originally Posted by gtenedio

update: hows the ride quality? is it significantly harsher? any bounce?

Sorry for the delay.

The ride quality is AMAZING.

The "floaty" feel is gone, handles corners at higher speeds with ease.

Soaks up bumps and dips, remains composed, handles better, they're height-adjustable and the stock M-Sport settings retain function.

[Mrcook23]

Originally Posted by bigscore

M-Sport adaptive suspension (Sport Plus, Sport, Comfort, Eco)

Looks good!! So you have msport suspension or the adaptive suspension? You listed all the modes except adaptive.

[Knifeedge2k1]

Mate I'm sorry to burst your bubble but there's no way your ride (compliance) has improved

Classic case of butt dyno not working

You can't really get better ride quality from stiffer springs unless you were riding on your bump stops beforehand

The ride may not have changed as much as you expected or not as harsh as you expected but it can't improve

You may "like" a harder suspension because of the "sportier" feel but it can't be characterized as an improvement in compliance

[PetieD 7]

Originally Posted by Knifeedge2k1

Mate I'm sorry to burst your bubble but there's no way your ride (compliance) has improved

Classic case of butt dyno not working

You can't really get better ride quality from stiffer springs unless you were riding on your bump stops beforehand

The ride may not have changed as much as you expected or not as harsh as you expected but it can't improve

You may "like" a harder suspension because of the "sportier" feel but it can't be characterized as an improvement in compliance

Are you referring to numerous (well known) sport spring kits out there?….or just MSS spring kit in particular? Companies selling various sport spring kits have been boasting about "night 'n day" difference for over 30+ years.

[Knifeedge2k1]

Originally Posted by PetieD 7

Are you referring to numerous (well known) sport spring kits out there?….or just MSS spring kit in particular? For the past 30+ years, companies selling various sport spring kits have been boasting about "night 'n day" difference though.

All sports springs, not mss in particular

I'm sure companies selling you stuff are going to tell you it's great

Harder springs will "feel" sportier relative to comfortable soft rates even though this itself isn't always true. It's surprisingly easy to go too hard on spring rates for street diving especially if you have shit roads.

Suspension component "upgrades" is one of the more misunderstood areas of car modifications.

[PetieD 7]

Originally Posted by Knifeedge2k1

All sports springs, not mss in particular

I'm sure companies selling you stuff are going to tell you it's great

Harder springs will "feel" sportier relative to comfortable soft rates even though this itself isn't always true. It's surprisingly easy to go too hard on spring rates for street diving especially if you have shit roads.

Suspension component "upgrades" is one of the more misunderstood areas of car modifications.

If that's the case….money well wasted then. BTW, are you SME in terms of automotive suspension systems? Or, this is based on your experience and/or opinion using sport spring kit?

[Knifeedge2k1]

Originally Posted by PetieD 7

If that's the case….money well wasted then. BTW, are you SME in terms of automotive suspension systems? Or, this is based on your experience and/or opinion using sport spring kit?

For the look it's money well wasted, that's after all the main objective of most people looking at lowering springs... Hell that's the objective of most people who buy coilovers, it's to adjust ride height

If that's the goal then no harm no foul, if that's worth 1000 dollars to you, good for you, if that's worth 2000 good for you.

In regards to comfort and ride control and handling though, these are far more objective measures.

While a claim of "I love that slammed look" is unassailable in that it is something that is pure opinion, a claim of "this suspension rises better" can be measured.

No matter how much a person may think or claim to prefer the feel of one setup up another, qualities like whether a setup is under or over damped are objective realities. Whether a spring rate is too high to maintain adhesion over rough surfaces is an objective quantity.

Increasing spring rates must necessarily hurt your ride (comfort and compliance) because there is simply less room/time in which the suspension can dissipate energy from road irregularities (bumps)

This is assuming you had matched damping rates with the higher spring rates, if you have an under damped system it must be necessarily worse. It may not be MUCH worse if the spring rate difference isn't great but if you think the stock setup is perfectly damped, simply raising spring rates must necessarily make the new setup under damped.

As for spring rates and roll stiffness, the common sense argument is usually that "harder" suspension and greater resistance to roll (not the same thing) is better for handling and grip. This is usually backed up by looking at race cars and motor sports and seeing how they all have much stiffer suspension than road cars and correlating that extra performance with the harder suspension / roll stiffness.

It's surprising to most that this isn't actually the case, a suspension's job is to keep the tires on the road, if your tires are on the air, you don't have control, harder springs makes this more difficult. You generally want to run as soft a setup as you can get away with after taking other factors into consideration.

If you have a high aero car, you need harder springs because otherwise you'll bottom out under high aero load (limit is suspension travel)

If you have grippier tires, you need more roll stiffness otherwise in high G load corners you'll start riding on your bump stops. This is bad because a quick dynamic change in roll stiffness that results is "upsetting" the balance (the fronts and the rears don't tend to hit the stops at the same time). The geometry of the suspension can lead to some other undesirable effects at the extremes as well (loss of camber control or some dynamic change of toe that's undesirable for example).

In bumpy street circuits you'll very often step down in spring rates relative to a smooth circuit that has similar aero and cornering speeds, compensating for the roll stiffness by running harder anti roll bars (which don't have dedicated damping usually)

People tend to think body roll is in and off itself bad, it isn't. Load transfer that is due to body roll is surprisingly little compared to load transfer that happens simply because you're turning (even in a car with a completely rigid suspension on a perfectly smooth surface you'll have almost as much load transfer between the left and rear axles in a corner as a car with a real suspension). The load transfer solely due to roll is from the center of mass moving to a different location, this tends to be very very very small. The main downside to body roll is that having more of it necessarily means the car takes longer to get settled in transitional phases, something that makes it harder to push since the grip in transient situations keeps changing.

Now with that said, it's there any benefits to roll? Mainly in communicating to the driver how close to the limit or how hard they're actually cornering. If you're a super super keen experienced driver you don't need this as much but for a novice, body roll tells you in a very visual/tactile/obvious way how hard you are cornering.


The simple takeaways are this:

If your roads are shit, don't run as stiff suspension as if your roads are mirror flat.

If you don't have grippy tires, don't run a stiffer suspension, you're giving up suspension travel for no reason.

If you want extra roll stiffness, a stiffer set of anti roll bars often gets you a lot of bang for the buck and doesn't negatively affect bump performance much. You can't derive all or even a majority of your roll stiffness from ARBs but most factory setups come really really weak and a set of aftermarket bars give you both more stiffness and often more adjustability to tune cornering balance.



As for my credentials, not that it matters what they are if there is nothing wrong with what I've stated above but I did FSAE for a decent while when I was in uni and have spent ungodly amounts of money on car mods over 15 years and realized that a lot of them were crap. The most crap items were usually from companies telling you how it's all amazing with no drawbacks whereas the best items were the ones that were upfront and told you "hey, you'll get an improvement here but what you're going to lose out on is there, make sure you're OK with that". There is ALWAYS a drawback somewhere. Gone are the days of really shitty engineering where changing an intake would release 20hp.

Honesty in running a business and in treating your customers usually correlates quite well with good engineering (at least not bad engineering).

[Knifeedge2k1]

Also, progressive springs are generally a pretty bad idea

I'm not even taking about the little helper springs which are necessary in a lot of setups to maintain cohesion at full droop.

Setups where the main spring element is progressive will run into damping issues for obvious reasons. If the springs are not very progressive (not much difference between full soft and full hard) then it's not a big deal but some progressives ramp up 2 times or more, which is just retarded.

[choppedliver]

Originally Posted by Knifeedge2k1

Mate I'm sorry to burst your bubble but there's no way your ride (compliance) has improved

Classic case of butt dyno not working

You can't really get better ride quality from stiffer springs unless you were riding on your bump stops beforehand

The ride may not have changed as much as you expected or not as harsh as you expected but it can't improve

You may "like" a harder suspension because of the "sportier" feel but it can't be characterized as an improvement in compliance

I just got MSS installed and lowered the car about an inch. Whilst the compliance is likely worse the car is less floaty and feels less like a boat in comfort. I was always putting it in sport to stiffen it up. Did it need to be stiffer to be fast, probably not, but to me it feels better. The stiffer springs are why, but the good news is that the ride in comfort is almost as good as stock. Yes it's stiffer but it's still very compliant and comfortable.

Is it stiffer? Yes and you can feel it in the corners and when giving it full throttle in comfort. The car feels better in corners without resorting to sports mode. Mind you there is some camber to be dialled out once the springs settle. I also find you don't get that back and forth movement when gear changing at WOT in comfort as everything is stiffer.

Sports+ is a lot stiffer.

Overall I suspect it's made the car a little closer to an M5 in terms of comfort (i.e. it's less comfortable) but it's very minimal after a 100km drive yesterday. The wife had no negative comments and I'm happy with the look and how it feels/handles.

Did I ruin the car? I'd say no and if it came this way from factory you wouldn't complain. And I can go back to stock ride height if I wanted.

Evolve were involved in the development and i think they did a great job.

Stock ride height is 5.6", M5 comp is 5" and I think mine in theory is now 4.6" and no issues with speed bumps. The stiffness stops the car bottoming out through too much softness when going over speedbumps.

All in all I'm happy regards of any technical negatives.

[bigscore]

Originally Posted by Knifeedge2k1

Mate I'm sorry to burst your bubble but there's no way your ride (compliance) has improved

Classic case of butt dyno not working

You can't really get better ride quality from stiffer springs unless you were riding on your bump stops beforehand

The ride may not have changed as much as you expected or not as harsh as you expected but it can't improve

You may "like" a harder suspension because of the "sportier" feel but it can't be characterized as an improvement in compliance

Classic case of you talking out your butt.

BTW never said i like harder suspension nor did i say it was "harder".

[Knifeedge2k1]

Originally Posted by bigscore

Classic case of you talking out your butt.

BTW never said i like harder suspension nor did i say it was "harder".

if you install lowering springs and that aren't higher spring rate, you're gonna have a bad time unless you like riding on bump stops and unintuitive limit handling from the massive increase in rate associated with this

and sure, you wanna argue with basic suspension tuning methodology/theory, be my guest, what do I know i'm just a guy on the internet

[bigscore]

Originally Posted by Knifeedge2k1

if you install lowering springs and that aren't higher spring rate, you're gonna have a bad time unless you like riding on bump stops and unintuitive limit handling from the massive increase in rate associated with this

and sure, you wanna argue with basic suspension tuning methodology/theory, be my guest, what do I know i'm just a guy on the internet

Just shut the F up, please.

NOTHING that you're describing has taken place with my car.

Look up "MSS adjustable suspension" that's what my car is equipped with.

[Knifeedge2k1]

Originally Posted by bigscore

Just shut the F up, please.

NOTHING that you're describing has taken place with my car.

Look up "MSS adjustable suspension" that's what my car is equipped with.

What exactly am I describing do you think isn't happening?

If you're not riding on your stops is that because you're not cornering hard? You didn't go for as aggressive a drop? Your roads aren't bad so you never actually need the full suspension travel?


Literally all I said was changing springs without dampers is a compromised solution (which it is)

I also said changing springs expecting a better performing suspension for cornering is at best misguided at best (which it absolutely is)

If it worked out for you that's great but that doesn't mean the system isn't compromising something. To think this change yielded NO downsides is just retarded.

Hell, to think this upgrade makes more sense than a set of coilovers from say ST (KW sister brand) which costs exactly the same is retarded.

I'm not saying MSS is a terrible product and worse than Ebola. I'm saying it isn't a legitimate solution in the way a purposely developed set of coilovers are.

It's niche is people (who don't have EDC) that want the look of dropped ride height AND want ride height adjustability but don't care much about actual performance in corners OR those who want to keep their electronic dampers but don't want to spend 3000 for EDC compatible KWs.

Don't take things personally man. You can enjoy the product you bought knowing it is compromised in certain areas and be ok with it because the pros are more withheld to you than the cons. But to claim there are no downsides is juvenile. I myself make plenty of stupid mods from an objective standpoint, I bought the 3000 usd M preformance brakes despite the fact I know it will never perform any differently than the base brakes I had since I don't track my car,i know I did it for looks and that's OK,I'm not gonna lie to myself that the performance difference makes it worthwhile.

[Knifeedge2k1]

For what it's worth

I have an M Sport with front lip and side skirts

I have about 5 inches of clearance at the front and 6 inches, maybe 6.5 in the rear.

Now I have no idea how much compression travel the G30 has but it can't be more than 5 inches in the front and 6.5 in the back (it didn't matter how far the wheel can go up into the wheel well if my skirt and lip start to drag pavement)

If I lower 1 inch ride height, I'll need at least 20% increase in spring rate in the front and 15% in the back (though you'll probably want to keep the same % increase to avoid building understeer into the handling) to make sure the amount of load at full compression is the same. In reality I doubt bmw designed so much travel in the suspension that some of it can never be used which means the spring rate increase should be in all likelihood MORE than 20%, perhaps 25 - 30%.

This is not insignificant and should definitely require different spec dampers.

I have no idea what the mss spring rates are but given they don't really differentiate between whether you had the stock dampers, M Sport dampers, electronic dampers etc. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's probably not well matched for most people.

Furthermore, you see on other lowering springs on the market the signs increase is typically on the order of 15% or so which is definitely not enough and will absolutely cause you to rise your bump stops more often than if you were on your OEM suspension.

These are all objective facts. I'm not saying you will ride on your bump stops all the time or 20% of the time or whatever, I'm saying it will happen MORE than if you were on your OEM setup. This is objectively true.

[Boosted_8]

I'm looking at these MSS springs currently. My problem is I am ridiculously happy with the ride quality of my car right now since I took off the run flats. I also need ground clearance and 4WD as I live in the country and the roads/lanes are pretty bad.

However, I keep thinking that there is a little bit of arch gap that could be gotten rid of and a bit too much pitch and squat on acceleration & braking.

I think these springs set to -10mm front and -5mm rear would do the trick. I don't know what the spring rate is. Ideally they would be 10% stiffer at a mild drop for me to want to buy them but this is a secret according to the website.

Worst case I leave the OEM springs and dampers alone. I have M5 roll bars and camber arms to set the car up with a bit more corner grip and roll resistance, which in theory would make the car handle well on the roads I drive, without making it uncomfortable (I bought the M550i over an M5 for a reason!)