Hi there fellow F Typers .

A question I have been meaning to pose for a long time is this, do you feel any difference in the suspension / ride quality when you switch to Dynamic Mode?

I switch mine into dynamic frequently as its very useful when wanting the extra throttle response and I have never noticed any difference whatsoever in the suspension. I have double and triple checked that it is setup for everything in Dynamic and have always expected the ride to get harder and so I wonder if the change would only be felt at the track. I have never tracked the car and most of my driving is quieter country roads where its mostly not possible to drive to the cars limits.

I am just curious, I have no issues with performance at all. In fact just did a 900 mile trip a couple of weeks ago and it was an absolute joy, exceeded the 'go straight to jail' speed several times.

As said I have been meaning to ask for a couple of years but keep forgetting.

So can you tell the difference in Dynamic Mode on normal roads?

 

I know you said that you checked, but it's possible that a previous owner disabled the suspension changing modes. Post a screen shot of the setup in Sport Mode.

That said, the difference isn't night and day. I would like to think that I'm fairly sensitive to suspension changes and it's pretty subtle. You asked whether the difference can be felt on normal roads. It depends very much on how smooth the road is. On a really smooth road, no difference will (can) be felt, and the more bumpy, the more it will be noticed. It's not a black and white thing, but by degree, and subjective. My wife claimed that she could tell the difference in the suspension feel, but that was before I found out that the previous owner had disabled it, so, yeah, subtle.

As an aside, I disabled Sport Mode from messing with the throttle... it doesn't make the car any faster, and having it mess with how much the throttle opens and when didn't do anything for me.

 

I have a 2016 with the dynamic mode options and the dynamic suspension. I can tell immediately if in hard v soft modes....it is night and day.

I drive around in "dynamic aka hard" mode all the time because ....whatever. But if I were to be fully honest, I suspect the car would be fine up to 9/10's in soft mode all the time....it is really quite good and frankly, on a long drive from A to B, I plan to go "regular" because it is sublime. Jaguar's suspension engineers nailed it in my opinion. It is wonderful for a street car.

Had two track oriented cars in the past with the works...motons...then ohlins. I loved them...but this stock F-type is quite nice.

 

My Menu looks exactly like this and the only choice for settings is Normal or Dynamic.

Most of the road around me a bumpy and I dont feel any difference when switching modes - maybe my **** is lacking the fine tuning .

 

Same in my car...but it is very different feeling. Normal is actually pretty good and will hold the car flat in turns and prevent dives/squatts with brake/power. Dynamic is just stiffer overall and you feel more.
One key variable is the wheels. On a larger sidewall the difference could be muted....I am on 20's in 265/305. If on 18's this could in theory be hard to tell apart...

 

I feel a distinct difference on anything other than a really smooth road, it is noticeably harder and bumpier in Dynamic.
I prefer Dynamic throttle, trans and steering over Normal so I drive in Dynamic all the time, and I have configured "My Setting" as Dynamic for these three but Normal for suspension.

 

On OEM wheels and P Zeros, and driving on a poor surface or where there are big bumps in the road at lowish speeds (say up to 60kph) you would find dynamic jiggly (it improves as you go faster). On a smooth road you wouldnt notice the difference.

I also find that once your seat leather is nice and soft, it absorbs the bumpiness, so you notice the difference a lot more when the car is new. I'd be happy to drive mine in dynamic all the time except on a really poor road, and it is sitting on 21's.

 

I'm one who has a less than sensitive **** it seems. I find it hard to tell the difference between dynamic suspension "on" or "off". As said above, I think it's pretty good on the roads in terms of comfort for a comparitively stiff suspensiuon in a sports car. A friend of mine has a BMW "M" car, and the ride in that is really harsh compared to the F. Nonetheless, I use normal mode for suspension on the road, assuming it must be a little softer, and save dynamic suspension setting for when I'm on the track. On the track, which by definition is beautifully smooth, there is no harshness at all, but it goes round bends like a go kart so it must do something.

 

You could check the fuse, which might be listed in the owner’s handbook.

FYI, here’s how the adaptive dampers work…
https://www.dropbox.com/s/05kci965sf...mping.pdf?dl=0

 

I can feel the difference in the suspension in Dynamic mode but where I can't tell any difference is in the amount of boost that the steering receives. I would like the steering effort to be just a little bit stiffer in the Dynamic mode but it seems the same. Here is a screen shot of the Configurable Dynamics set up in my 2021, I just leave the settings on factory (i.e. all four settings are engaged) when it is in the Dynamic mode.

 

Wow thanks for that Link DJS - very informative. I now wonder if my car is always in 'Firm' mode - it says in case of a power fault the suspension defaults to firm.

Do you know where the fuse is located? BTW I see no faults indicated on the dash, shouldn't one be indicated if the fuse was blown?

I wonder if I can simply turn the car on and put a voltmeter on the suspension actuator connection.

Oh and I have 19" wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport 4 AS

 

I just read the manual and apparently fuse 14 in the passenger side box is for Adaptive damper control which I assume is it, I will check it.

 

Ask and you shall receive! Awesome response from djs!

 

Tech tip: Fuses blow because too much current ran through them. So many threads in car forums mention having a "bad fuse", implying that replacing it fixes the issue - no. Replace it and either immediately or some time later, it'll pop again; its job is to protect the wiring from melting or burning, and tells you that there's a problem somewhere downstream.

 

Did you check the fuse? Yeah as kb58 said it will prolly rear its ugly head again. I keep popping 20amps in my boat amp. Something is wrong.
Anyway if it is blown do NOT put a bigger fuse in there!

 

Well folks, I now believe the problem is just me and the lack of butt calibration.

I drove around today on the same route several times paying close attention to ride 'bumpiness' in both normal and dynamic modes, I also found a very nice corner that could be taken fast.

The result is that I could tell the difference in each mode, the change in 'bumpiness' was very subtle - but detectable. On the fast corner the car was definitely 'flatter' in dynamic mode.

Therefore my pondering were unfounded and I apologize for wasting my fellow F-typers time - thanks for your comments though and that link from DJS was great reading.

 

I don't notice much difference between suspension settings but I had a passenger comment on the ride (I always run in dynamic). I switched to normal and asked if that was better. The answer was "yes" so it is noticeable.

 

Same here, I never feel any clear difference between the suspension settings. Maybe it's because I usually only drive on super smooth roads (Luxembourg, Germany, France...). I recently did a road trip up to the UK though and thought I could sense a bit of a difference on the atrociously bumpy and coarse UK roads.

Same thing with the steering - never noticed any day and night difference between the modes.

 

Maybe I am more sensitive than some, but I can definitely tell a difference when switching between Dynamic and normal modes...suspension definitely gets softer on the normal mode. That said, I rarely run in normal mode, with almost all of my 80K+ miles having been run in dynamic.

Where things get REAL interesting is when I turn the TRAC completely OFF...it feels, by seat of the pants, as if it found even more room to stride and add a few crackles and pops, but the feel could just be that there is some wheel slip between shifts under spirited conditions.

 

I'll second KB58 here and even go a step further. On my manual transmission S I found that keeping the throttle response at Normal made rev matching easier and even helped with smoother launches. When Dodge built the Viper they deliberately choose not to go with a fast opening throttle just to make it easier to modulate the throttle. I can't think of any reason why you would want the throttle to be twitchier when it does not actually make the car any faster. My 2 cents.