EDC Comfort vs. Sport--can you clearly feel a difference in ride comfort?

[TomTarzian]

For those who have E90/92 M3s with EDC, can you clearly feel a difference in ride comfort between the comfort and sport settings? If so, is the difference significant and on what types of road conditions do you you feel it?

Thanks and God bless,
Tom

[geoff2010]

I can certainly feel the difference between the three modes. I generally cruise on the highway in comfort, do my daily driving in sport, and when I want to play it's in sport plus.

comfort feels like my stock 335 w/sport package
sport plus feels like my 335 after I put on the HR springs
sport is somewhere in the middle.

[Keto]

It's comfort, normal and sport, no? Sport Plus is a throttle setting I thought.

[GregW / Oregon]

Originally Posted by Keto

It's comfort, normal and sport, no? Sport Plus is a throttle setting I thought.

Yes. Sport is very stiff and really only good for smooth tracks. Comfort is not muchy at all for daily driving; retains a good deal of control. I have "Normal" configured on the MDrive button.

[Keto]

Yeah, my plan was to leave Comfort at baseline for the shitty streets around me and have "Normal" for the better main roads. Sport for steering always, and throttle mapping I need to feel the sensitivities first.

[GregW / Oregon]

Originally Posted by Keto

Yeah, my plan was to leave Comfort at baseline for the shitty streets around me and have "Normal" for the better main roads. Sport for steering always, and throttle mapping I need to feel the sensitivities first.

I use the Sport throttle setting for daily driving, as I did in my E46. Wish it could be set as a default, though.

[adamr]

i drove an EDC M3 today and honestly was trying to figue out any difference between the settings and could not feel any .... was on suburb roads, with some nice straights to open car up ....

[rich662]

EDC does its magic on bad roads. If your city has good roads, you might not even need it.

[geoff2010]

Originally Posted by Keto

It's comfort, normal and sport, no? Sport Plus is a throttle setting I thought.

yeah... sorry, comfort, normal, sport... my bad.

[footie]

Funny I found the Comfort mode slightly better/softer than the M/Sport 335i and with better body control as well, it the mode of choice in normal driving and best suited to wet weather and country roads. Normal did feel firmer than the 335i but didn't feel any less comfortable. Sport like someone has already said is best left for the track, far too firm unless your into back pain and don't value your smile.

[m3larson]

Originally Posted by adamr

i drove an EDC M3 today and honestly was trying to figue out any difference between the settings and could not feel any .... was on suburb roads, with some nice straights to open car up ....

After driving the car for a couple weeks there is a big difference in settings. The car can ride like a 911 on one setting and like a 5 series on another setting. If you change the settings while driving you can feel the difference

[TomTarzian]

Thanks for all your replies. I have had my E90 M3 for almost a week and I can't feel any difference between EDC Comfort and EDC Sport, even on bumpy roads. I took the car to the dealer yesterday to make sure the EDC was working properly and that there was no other problem. Everything checked out OK but the folks at the dealership couldn't feel any difference, either. I wonder what's up?

God bless,
Tom

[adamr]

it just can be changed with the EDC button right ??? ... no need to go into the idrive menu to change it ..... i have played around with it while driving and I swear I tried really hard to feel a difference and could not ... the car driven had 8000km on the clock ...

[lucid]

Originally Posted by TomTarzian

For those who have E90/92 M3s with EDC, can you clearly feel a difference in ride comfort between the comfort and sport settings? If so, is the difference significant and on what types of road conditions do you you feel it?

There is a huge difference depending on how hard you are pushing the car and the road surface. EDC cannot and does not change the spring rate. It adjusts the damping ratio. The dampers come into play (to dissipate energy) when the suspension experiences a difference in loading (and the springs are compressed/uncompressed and the mass of the car begins to oscillate). If your car is moving on a perfectly smooth surface at constant speed, the loading conditions should not change, and you should not be able to tell a difference between the Comfort and Sport. When you accelerate/decelerate and/or turn, the loading conditions obviously change as you start registering lateral and/or longitudinal accelerations, and then the damper settings come into play, and you start noticing differences in the way the suspension responds. The magnitude of those differences are correlated with how hard you are pushing the car. However, even if you are not pushing the car and registering significant lateral and longitudinal accelerations, you notice significant differences when driving on a poor surface; the suspension experiences significant (abrupt) changes in loading per unit time due to holes and uneven surfaces which can be characterized as step-inputs. Driving on a poor road with Sport vs. Comfort is like night and day.

[umwolverine]

Agree with Lucid. I have found very noticable differences between the 3 settings. If your not, and the dealer isn't as well, you might want to take a demo from the dealer and compare on the same roads. This will let you know right away if EDC is not working properly, or if your just nuts. I don't know which one would be worse. BTW, comfort for cruising, normal for fun, sport for serious performance.

[e46e92love]

Also remember that in 'NORMAL' the system automatically stiffens things up in a turn, so on the straights its softer but in the corners it tightens up. So going from NORMAL to SPORT setting on the EDC is more about what the car is doing in a straight-line because as soon as you turn the car into a turn these two settings become almost the same. That is at least what the mags and informational press releases seem to indicate.

[TomTarzian]

Originally Posted by umwolverine

Agree with Lucid. I have found very noticable differences between the 3 settings. If your not, and the dealer isn't as well, you might want to take a demo from the dealer and compare on the same roads. This will let you know right away if EDC is not working properly, or if your just nuts. I don't know which one would be worse. BTW, comfort for cruising, normal for fun, sport for serious performance.

We tried my car and a demo on similar roads. We thought we could feel very small differences between comfort and sport in the demo, but certainly not significant ones.

God bless,
Tom

[DEAN325i]

i feel the differences

[JS11]

i definitely feel the difference

[dawgdog]

I found the differences fairly subtle on my test drives. It certainly isn't like the difference between the 335 sport suspension and KW coilovers.

[Romo]

Some feel the difference, some don`t............................


I think that is telling us something about how sensitive the drivers ass is

[footie]

Originally Posted by Romo

Some feel the difference, some don`t............................


I think that is telling us something about how sensitive the drivers ass is

No, it's just a case of the type of road surface some of us has driven it on. On a smooth road you are hardly going to feel a difference as the suspension has little or nothing to do on those occasions. I exampled it on a bumpy B-road and found the difference easy to notice.

P.S.
If size accounts for sensitivity then mine is off the scale.