Suspension Upgrades for DD Ride Quality

[Matt@Evolve]

I'd personally be looking at why you ride quality is deteriorating rather than immediately jumping in to modifications.

Noticing more harshness could be the sign of bushings wearing and transferring more force in to the body, or dampers starting to wear more.

If wanting to keep it a road car then some replacement bushes and maybe an upgrade to our Evolve B6 EDC dampers would be the way to go.

[M3SQRD]

Originally Posted by Matt@Evolve

I'd personally be looking at why you ride quality is deteriorating rather than immediately jumping in to modifications.

Noticing more harshness could be the sign of bushings wearing and transferring more force in to the body, or dampers starting to wear more.

If wanting to keep it a road car then some replacement bushes and maybe an upgrade to our Evolve B6 EDC dampers would be the way to go.

It could be suspension arm bushings going bad but drop off in damper performance shows up differently from suspension arms. Sure there are times it’s difficult to tell where it’s coming from. It could be the strut top mount going bad but they usually, but not always, make a noise while turning the steering wheel or when compressing the suspension. At a certain mileage it makes sense to replace all suspension bushings and mounts. Stock dampers are pretty worn out at 50-60k miles, sometimes longer based on its use case. Heading down either path will likely result in both bushings/mounts and dampers being replaced. Stock damper tuning isn’t great, except perhaps the full CS setup with 19”/20” wheels. ZCP is hard to tell if it’s been improved because they went with 20”/20” wheels. We know the 666M looks good in 19” on f82 GTS so they could’ve offered 19”/20” 666M wheels.

The reviews of your Evolve/Bilstein B6 have been mixed at best from reviews/commons in the e9x M and f8x forums. A common complaint is an overly harsh ride compared to any stock EDC setting. Supposedly your Comfort setting is supposedly better than the Bilstein B6 but that’s also considered to be very harsh. So a little less harshness doesn’t mean harsh free. I’ve also read about failures after only a few months of use. I have no idea how well spread this is but I’ve seen three posts talking about it. Perhaps it’s just limited to those three but not a good sign for a product that hasn’t been out for too long given the age of the f8x chassis. Have you driven or ridden in a car with a proper EDC or non-EDC damper setup? Those will show you what harsh free feels like. Yes, they are a quite a bit more expensive than your EB6 but you definitely get what you pay for.

[Matt@Evolve]

Originally Posted by M3SQRD

It could be suspension arm bushings going bad but drop off in damper performance shows up differently from suspension arms. Sure there are times it’s difficult to tell where it’s coming from. It could be the strut top mount going bad but they usually, but not always, make a noise while turning the steering wheel or when compressing the suspension. At a certain mileage it makes sense to replace all suspension bushings and mounts. Stock dampers are pretty worn out at 50-60k miles, sometimes longer based on its use case. Heading down either path will likely result in both bushings/mounts and dampers being replaced. Stock damper tuning isn’t great, except perhaps the full CS setup with 19”/20” wheels. ZCP is hard to tell if it’s been improved because they went with 20”/20” wheels. We know the 666M looks good in 19” on f82 GTS so they could’ve offered 19”/20” 666M wheels.

The reviews of your Evolve/Bilstein B6 have been mixed at best from reviews/commons in the e9x M and f8x forums. A common complaint is an overly harsh ride compared to any stock EDC setting. Supposedly your Comfort setting is supposedly better than the Bilstein B6 but that’s also considered to be very harsh. So a little less harshness doesn’t mean harsh free. I’ve also read about failures after only a few months of use. I have no idea how well spread this is but I’ve seen three posts talking about it. Perhaps it’s just limited to those three but not a good sign for a product that hasn’t been out for too long given the age of the f8x chassis. Have you driven or ridden in a car with a proper EDC or non-EDC damper setup? Those will show you what harsh free feels like. Yes, they are a quite a bit more expensive than your EB6 but you definitely get what you pay for.

It's just my ethos to always explore worn OEM parts before immediately jumping to aftermarket products to fix an issue that wasn't there when the car was brand new. It's certainly what I'm doing with my own 133k mile F82 M4, which is starting to show its miles now. We'll be fitting a set of our Evolve B6 EDC dampers to this as part of a suspension refresh, and whilst the dampers are certainly showing their age I wouldn't contribute harshness to them, more the fact it's quite wallowy and doesn't resolve large bumps or anything thats stressing the damper at high speed.

I have noticed harshness through the steering wheel that I'm attributing to the front control arm bushes being past their best, no longer being as solid as they need to be meaning they have more movement, transferring more energy through the body rather than absorbing it correctly like when they were brand new. Similarly the front top mounts are past their best and this feels like an area that is introducing some additional harshness on rough surfaces.

I can only comment from a biased point of view, but having tried many different combinations of suspension setups on these cars over the years and put extensive mileage on our own cars testing and developing the products it was certainly our aim to take the base B6 EDC and improve upon it for road use. One of those aims was the make the comfort setting a little more compliant and in back to back testing with the Bilstein B6 we were very happy with the changes we made when working with Bilstein themselves.

I will say out of the box the first 100-200 miles like any Bilstein performance damper they do feel 'tight' and need a little breaking in, but thats to be expected really.

Having checked with our sales team they couldn't recall of any customers who have contacted us with any issues, and being manufactured by Bilstein themselves we can count on one hand the number of warranty claims we've had over the 17 years we've been a dealer for them. Of course if anyone were to have an issue we are always available to contact and will help out where we can.