I have been running a 525d M Sport Touring for 2 years now. One of the things that surprised me was how firm (read: jarring at times) the ride is. it has the sport suspension and 18" run-flats.
I am considering replacing now with an Audi A6 Avant and wondered if anyone had any direct experience of the two to be able to offer an informed opinion of the similarities/differences in ride?
The A6 often come on 19" wheels (the S-Line) - looks great, but will the ride in fact be worse the the BM?
For what it's worth , I noticed very little difference between
18's and 19's on my M3 . D.
It's the run-flats that make the ride extremely harsh. Replace tires with non run-flats - problem solved.
Pete
Excellent point ! D.
Not necessarily. Moving from a summer max performance RFT like the Bridgestone Re050A to a summer touring RFT such as the Goodyear NCT5 will improve the ride. Choosing an all-season tire (either RFT or non) will give an even more compliant ride, albeit at the expense of handling. Not all run-flats are the same!
But before you spend money on tires, have you experimented with the tire pressures?
Tom
Take $800. Get a set of four smaller rims, and some real tires with deeper sidewalls and no run-flats. You will be delighted at the improvement. It will be like having a new car. You can send me all the rest of the money if you'd like.
If you put huge dubs and run-flats on the Audi, it will not ride well. So, don't do that.
Don't throw away the baby with the bathwater, just get decent tires and relax.
--scott
Interesting thought. Have to say the 18" m-sport wheels *do* look the dog's though.
And that, in short is the whole problem. Do you want a car that looks good or a car that drives well? For my mind, I buy a car to drive.
--scott
It's kind of obnoxious, though, to have to spend a bunch of money (and four nice wheels are tires will cost you more than that), just to "fix" something on what is already a pretty expoensiove car.
Yeah, my Supra TT came with 17' wheels, which were kind of exotic back in the 90's, but are seen on even mundane vehicles today. Many owners replace them with 18's or 19's, in wider-yet widths. I've had the same thought, but I come back to that question, and have chosen to stay with the stock sizes that the car was engineered to have.
My take on this is that the Sport suspension is designed to BE pretty much what you are complaining about.
Luxo-boats are known for soft, supple rides. The sport package is intended to firm the ride and increase the road feel. I'm not sure what the run-flat tires do for the equation, but it could be worth your while to get away from them.
I had a 3 Series with the sport package that I also changed out the
225/55x15s for 225/45x17s, but I never thought the ride was "jarring." It was stiff to be sure, but I like that quality in a car much more than the wallowing-around-on-a-sack-of-pillows feeling. Granted, my 3 and your 5 are a comparison of apples and oranges, but the overall point is that the sport package is supposed to increase road feel and decrease body roll, which by definition shoulld make a firm ride.Just a thought to bring some perspective.
I agree with Dizzy to a point. But I think that the sport package is doing its job of reducing body roll and increasing road feel at the expense of a soft and squishy ride.
I'd replace the run-flats with actual tires on the same rims and wait for the lease to expire, then rethink plans to buy the sports package in the future.
I'm not sure what the most important thing is, but fitting into the wheel wells has to be high on the list. If one reduces the side wall height by the increased rim diameter, the overall effect is that the tires still fit inside the fenders. The next thing to consider is striking the suspension components, and that's adjusted with backspacing on the rims.
I'm not sure that staying with the stock sizes is as important as staying within the overall diameter specifications and avoiding the physical contact with the body and undercarriage. If you can keep the new tires from hitting stuff and retain the original tire circumference, then you can do pretty much anything you want with your tires and not affect anything in an adverse way.
Right, that's what all the kids are doing. They are getting tires with the narrowest possible sidewall height and the largest possible rims. This looks very fashionable, but it is a recipe for lousy handling.
Outside diameter of the tires is the same, but the sidewall is much shorter.
Other than ride and cornering ability, etc.
--scott
snipped-for-privacy@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote in news:hnoen2$n0p$ snipped-for-privacy@panix2.panix.com:
It actually will handle better with lower profile tires at the expence of a harsher ride as there is less sidewall to help cushin the impacts. KB
then you can do pretty
I would be wary of altering the 'offset' and suspension geometry as this changes the stresses at the mounts. I have known quite a few people have their suspension fail from fitting different wheel & tyre combos. This can alter the centre of gravity and gyro forces within the components.
Just my 2 cents.
Best regards
David.
BTW, a BMW 5 touring is better than an A6 Avant hands down.
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In article , skellyd8758 @NOSPAMsky.com says...>
Personal experience or based on reviews etc? Can you elaborate?
I think, personally, that there is a way to put really cool tires and wheels on your car without killing the ride and handling. Obviously (well, obvious to you and I), if the sidewalls become too narrow, then ride and handling will suffer. But when the stock sidewall is a 65 or 70, one can go to a larger rim and reduce the sidewall to a 45 or 50, and have a nice package that doesn't harm ride or handling. Indeed, ride may remain constant while the handling actually improves.
I agree though, when the sidewall gets down to an inch or so, ride and handling could easily go away.
That's not the entire story. A tire's load capacity is directly related to its cross-sectional area. Reduce the sidewhall height, and width should be increased to compensate. (This is something most ricers do not concern themselves with, I'm sure.)
You can also compensate for reduced cross-sectional area by increasing air pressure, but that, obviously, has repercussions also.
That's not true, Dizzy. You can decrease the sidewall height and increase the rim diameter, and keep the same tread width.
Within a few revolutions over an entire mile, a 225/55x15 and a 225/45x17 are identical. The tread is the same while the sidewall height is narrower, but the circumference is so close that over a mile, the tire turns within 10 rotations of the same for each. So, narrower sidewall does not require a wider tire. If one wanted to stay with the same rims, then you would be right, sorta. If you went to a wider tire, you would have to reduce the aspect ratio to keep the same overall diameter. The problem here is that wider tires often times do not fit on the same rims -- a rim that's 7 inches wide can only carry a tire that is relatively narrow in the first place, so if one was inclined to replace a 16x7JJ rim with a 16x8.5JJ, then why not get an 18x8.5JJ and get the tires to fit the rim properly and reduce the sidewall height in combination with the wider tire so the overall diameter remains within the specification for the car.
I just pulled a "standard" tire size out of my ass to illustrate the point, if you had a stock tire of 205/60x16, you could replace it with a 245/40x18, and have exactly the same -- for any practical purpose -- tire in terms of diameter. The 16 goes 785.209 revolutions per mile, the 18 goes 784.248. For any practical reason, these two tires are identical, except one is wider and should fit the bigger rim than a wider tire on the original rim. The 16 tire is 8 inches wide, the 18 inch tire is 9.5 inches wide. Both of these examples would fit nicely on the rims I have described.
I haven't explored the fender clearances and undercarriage obstructions, but I just wanted to illustrate that you can change the numbers around to get a tire that fits the general spec of the original fitment, and do it very easily.
If you wanted to stay with the same width of a rim, but change the diameter, then you would retain the original tire width and simply decrease the aspect ratio by 5 for every inch increase in rim diameter. If you had a 15x8JJ rim that took a 225/55x15, you could replace the rim with a 17X8JJ and fit it with a 225/45x17 tire, and nothing would be affected -- except in my case the speedometer error was corrected from an error of about 6% to an error of about 1% -- my car went from reading 80 and doing 75 to reading 80 and doing
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