BMW 640D wheels and suspension - comfort vs rough ride

[CIS121]

Hi,

I am bit of an old man - I bought a 530d and deliberately wanted an SE (with softer suspension than an M sport) and as soon as I bought it I scrapped the run flat tyres to get more comfy ones. Comfort over handling/looks for me.

I'm now changing to a 640D - will be a few years old. I have a few cars and this will mainly be for longer tours - I have a second home in the Balkans that I will drive to several times a year and regularly do long trips across the UK.

I realise the M sport and skinny tyres look much better on the 6 series, but would love to hear from people who have the skinny tyres or M sport variants and do long distances - how do you find these and do you still feel a high level of comfort? Very few 640Ds on the used market are SE spec

[Ninja59]

The 20's give less comfort and are known to have buckling issues

[Luckyone]

We had a 640d MSport for a while, it was horrible on the 20”s with the runflats on, down right dangerous really, you could feel the tyres losing contact with the road causing under & over steer. Swapped to 19” with non runflats & it transformed the car.





Looked lovely but still didn’t really like the car much really. Just got an E93 335i & first impressions are it seems a lot nicer to drive than the F13 was...

[jay123]

Go with 19's. Tested one on 20's and the ride was horrid on anything other than a perfectly smooth surface. I ended up getting one on 19's, they are a lot better. Probably even better without rft's.

[Luckyone]

If you’re mainly using it on motorways an MSport will be very nice to drive on 19”s & non runflats, it’s amazing how bumpy it makes motorways feel on the standard 20s & runflats! If you want to enjoy A roads an F13 isn’t a good car, maybe some experimenting with scrub radius could help but there’s just no fead back though the steering at all. That combined with the high levels of sound proofing & you feel too detached from the road, it’s more like playing a video game than driving a car.

I noticed when we got the F13 active steering was an option it didn’t have, I didn’t like the sound if it anyway, but my 335i has it & it’s actually quite nice if you’re feeling lazy, it turns off when you turn off the traction control anyway. Maybe an F13 would be better with that option. Then again the other E9Xs we have had all had good feedback through the standard steering...

[cerb4.5lee]

Did 70k miles in a 640d M sport with 20" wheels(run flats) and the ride was terrible on anything but smooth tarmac. I swapped to none runflats and the ride improved considerably, but because of the elastic band sidewalls I suffered 3 punctures over a short space of time.

My advice is definitely 19" wheels and from what I read the VDC option is well worth while too on the M sport. Or just go for the smallest wheels on the SE model I reckon.

[CIS121]

Luckyone said:

We had a 640d MSport for a while, it was horrible on the 20”s with the runflats on, down right dangerous really, you could feel the tyres losing contact with the road causing under & over steer. Swapped to 19” with non runflats & it transformed the car.





Looked lovely but still didn’t really like the car much really. Just got an E93 335i & first impressions are it seems a lot nicer to drive than the F13 was...

Thank you - I actually think the 19s look better in my eyes and I have never liked run flats, ditching them fast when I got the 530D. Lovely house by the way!!

[CIS121]

Hey, thanks folks for your feedback - it seems pretty unanimous - much smoother on 19s with non run flat than the 20" inch wheels. I don't really push cars on A roads through the corners - I don't have the skills and response times and so a car like this which doesn't have real sports can handling for me but can eat large motorway miles is ideal for me.

Thanks again guys - it's really useful and kind to share your thoughts!

[twokcc]

Son has a 640d GC(four door) on 20" wheels. Chnged dulop rnflats to Michelin PS 4 non runflats. Can comment about handling but made a big difference to ride comfort.
As a result put non runflats ps4's on front of my R56 mini cooper s to replace non runflats Toyo Tr1's made a huge difference to ride. Improved it far more than the Koni FSD's shockers that I had fitted. Made a decent riding car. Changed it for a F56 Cooper s which has same size tyres. The nearly new PS4's taken off R56 and waiting in garage about to replace propellor wheels with pirelli runflats to black Cosmos wheels with the Michelins on all four corners. An amazing tyre in my opinion if you,re looking for best ride comfort.

[Guyr]

I have a 640d GC M-Sport and have done 40k miles in under two years. The car has also been to Italy and back loaded with the wife and kids.

I deliberately spent ages getting the right spec car (£23k in options when new) and went for 19s after getting my brothers feedback on the 20s on his two door M640d.

The car came with run-flats and had a very harsh ride even on the 19s, I switched to PS4 non-RFT and it is much better and perfectly fine for long journeys, though still typical BMW firm.

The only option that would have made it more 'comfortable' would be variable dampers, which were omitted on my car, but very few 6 series seem to have them fitted (of 52 640d GC for sale currently on the BMW website, only 6 have variable dampers, but they all have 20s which sort of defeats the purpose)

Edited by Guyr on Monday 6th January 18:24

[rassi]

Would a G30 5 series be in budget? I find my 540i with adaptive drive sublime, whether on 19” Winter or 20” summer tyres (RFT), easily the most comfortable of all the BMWs I have had.