[Nezil]

Originally Posted by OzWoz

I found out we have a "bad road" package on our cars which adds 10mm to the height. https://www.newtis.info/tisv2/a/en/f...ral/1VnYgjyGlB

This is really interesting. Does a VIN decode show this up for your car as well?

I'm wondering how the 'bad road package' actually achieves this lift. The stock suspension has no adjustment, so what exactly has been changed? Do you have different parts in your suspension from the rest of the world?

The kit came with bump stops...

The fact that there are no replacement rear bump stops is what worries me the most about this kit. If you're going to lower, you loose travel in the shock before the bump stop hits, so you either end up with less travel, or you replace the bump stops to regain that travel. It is totally possible that you might increase the spring rate to avoid hitting the bump stops I suppose, and a higher spring rate spring would lead to a lower overall spring rate if the stock suspension was engaging the bump stops all the time. I guess I'm thinking aloud, but that could work, even with less travel due to lowering.

Stiffer springs usually results in less grip, but if the car is engaging the bump stops frequently, a stiffer spring may result in an overall lower spring rate, if that makes sense.

...2 rubber slip mats that are supposed to replace rubber spring seats in the rear and "eliminate resonant road noise" ..my tech scratched his head on that one as he couldn't see what the mats did or why they were included as the standard seats were fine.

My specialists are a BMW performance shop here in Sydney, with ex-BMW techs working for them. The kit got a general thumbs up from them for its quality, as they had not seen one here before. They did make one observation which I will pass back to Evolve (Imran...if you're reading this please chime in). Either end of the standard springs are slightly curved to sit in their spring perches. The MSS ones apparently are not. They seat well with no issues and certainly aren't going to move anywhere, but the installer pointed it out.

I think you've answered your question in your tech's comment. The rear MSS springs are made with a flat top and bottom. I don't think the stock ones are, so the mounts wouldn't fit correctly perhaps? Mounting the black spring for the rear directly to the lower control arm without any rubber doesn't seem right to me, but that's what the installation instructions call for.

On to the road test. I have minimal mileage-time (maybe 100?) so take this as preliminary, but I could feel no difference in comfort to the stock springs.

Originally Posted by OzWoz

Low speed handling at those speeds is (to me) indistiguishable from stock. Certainly no float or other weirdness.

This could be a placebo (due to spending cash!) but some of the potholes that I can't avoid on regular routes are not transmitting into the cabin as much. Like I say...that could be placebo, but its certainly as good as stock.

I think these last few comments are a good summary of what I was expecting re. comfort. Watching the EVOLVE video again, the chart they show has large excursions of movement for big bumps, but the smaller bumps look identical to me. The video from Joe A. has him driving down some really bad roads that would certainly be testing the long excursion behaviour rather than the typical small <30 mph comfort.