Would really love BMW to do a software upgrade to be able to move the suspension up in notches of 1cm at a time, bit like the manual settings suspension, although it works well, between MINI, MAX, AUTO there has to be some other comfort zones.
I can see why some people might want that facility, but can also see why BMW don't provide it. The current system, in AUTO mode, appears to be designed to maintain an optimum (in BMW's view) ride height and therefore geometry, regardless (within reason) of load, and I have to say I think this works exceedingly well.
As part of this I believe it also tweaks damping to suit the load on the bike, which it can accurately measure by how much preload it has had to apply to get the bike back to the optimum ride height. This means that these load related damping adjustments, which I think are very important for good handling, can be more accurate than the old manually selected rider, rider + pillion, rider + pillion + luggage presets. These, though better than no adjustment, would only be accurate for loads which conform exactly to the average weights those presets are designed for.
I realise that users can also influence the damping through the mode selections, but I assume these just bias the settings either side of the load related base level which the bike sets automatically, and overlying this is the dynamic adjustment which is supposed to fine tune the damping based on road conditions and riding style.
If users were allowed to randomly select a ride height, regardless of load, then it would be very difficult for the system to choose the correct amount of load related damping. The MIN and MAX settings are presumably special cases which are not intended for general use, so I guess they make some default initial damping settings for when these modes are in use.
Overall quite a complex system, so no wonder they don't want users fiddling with ride height settings.
I guess if you want the freedom to do this you need to go with a non-ESA suspension bike but of course you then lose the undoubted benefits of automatic adjustment. I find this is pretty much indispensible when frequently changing between two-up and solo riding, so I'm willing to lose a degree of manual control in exchange. However, I recognise that this is not the case for everyone, and particularly those who always ride with the same load and would like to manually tune the suspension.
Fred
