BMWBig6

Is it a trade-off tuned for more comfort/control, with diminishing returns or actually penalties to performance once damping force gets as high as the sports suspension alone?

snagitseven

Unfortunately though, you there's no break on the sports pkgs with ADS even though ADS has many of the same components. Somewhat of a double dip IMO. (though I understand that the smallest part of the cost of the Sports pkgs are the beefed up springs and shocks).

BMWBig6

Does anybody know? Or care to postulate?

gk1

As damping rate gets higher the variable dampers have less rebound damping force either by engineering design or simply as an inherent characteristic of the damper itself. (Is that better or worse I honestly do not know.)

There's more info on suspensions on bike forums than the car fourms. :-)

Here's a snipit from a random bike page.

"Too much rebound damping slows down rebound and causes the front of the bike to pump down over bumps. Too little rebound allows the front to bounce back too quickly reducing control."

And another snipit from Sport Rider...

<img src="http://images.sportrider.com/tech/146-9604-tech-01-zoom.jpg">

"If you direct your attention to the right side of the traction versus rebound damping curve, you will note that at high rebound damping, traction has suffered. This is due to the wheel not being able to follow the ground simply because it can't respond quickly enough. The suspension compresses as it hits a bump. Then, it can't follow the ground (return to its original position in the travel) fast enough after the crest of the bump to maintain traction. When this is excessive it is called "packing." Somewhere between these two rebound damping extremes, traction is at maximum."
"Quite often riders have mistaken ideas about how much damping should be used. They think the faster they are (or the faster they want to be), the more damping they need. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, after a certain point, traction, control and ride quality (plushness) are all sacrificed. "

Where are the guys from Stasis? They can probably answer this one no problem.<ul><li><a href="http://www.sportrider.com/tech/146_9604_tech/index.html">http://www.sportrider.com/tech/146_9604_tech/index.html</a</li></ul>

BMWBig6

within the extreme end of the spectrum if it was that bad?

gk1

and it can only be desireably tuned with the variable dampers. Again... just a guess.