Hi everyone jr member here, haven't log on in a while. Anyway it's been 18 months since I first bought my 03 x type 3.0, 5sp. And I've been doing a bit of research and found that our cars drivetrain is directly delivering power to all wheels at all times. 40% at front n 60% at rear.

Now the other day I lifted my car on jack stands n did a simple test of running it while being lifted (curiosity) I noticed that all wheels were moving expect for the front driver side.
-Is this normal???

Do our cars have some type of limited slip that delivers the power to the wheel that needs it the most ?


-thanks for your input 👍

 

What you are speaking of, is called a differential. The rears have a differential also, so the car is able to turn, without destroying the drivetrain.......be cool......Mike

 

Technically speaking your 03 model has an LSD between the front and rear axles (viscous coupling in the transfer box) but the front and rear axles do not have LSD's.

If there was sufficient drag on the left front wheel, for example if the brake caliper was dragging, then that wheel might not turn...

 

Eden, our cars have an open differential between the two front tires and the two rear tires. The characteristic of this type of differential is that what ever wheel is moving faster will get all the power. So, in your case, the rear wheels happen to take off at the same time and therefore both were sharing the rear wheel power evenly. For whatever reason, there is more drag on your one front tire. So, the one that is more free started spinning and it took all the power going to the front end of the vehicle. There are pros and cons to what style differential you should put in a vehicle. This is what jaguar chose.

I would say that you want to do atleast a quick check of the wheel that wasn't spinning for any sort of binding. But, odds are, nothing of significance will be found. A simple drive around the block with easy braking will tell you if you have a caliper that is binding as you will have 1 front wheel that is significantly warmer than the other.

 

Pre 04 had a Hydraulic transferbox , 04 on had a mechanical transfer box. Hydraulic works more like proper 4x4 but is prone to leaks , wear &whining . Mechanical box is more robust but is just AWD...

 

That's not quite true, both the early and late cars have a mechanical differential in the transfer box, its just that the early cars also incorporated a viscous coupling acting on the mechanical differential to provide a limited slip function.

 

Thanks to all. will check that out and see if I could lift up the car n give it a go. Now towards the limited slip, is there a mod that can be done to have a limited slip differential ?

 

No LSD's available.

The front diff has a driveshaft running though the middle of it, so it's pretty much impossible to get a conventional LSD in there.

The rear diff is unique to the X-Type, I looked a few years ago and could not find any info suggesting an LSD that could fit.

 

Update:
So I've lifted up the car and I manually moved the front driver side wheel (the one that is stationary) and it moved freely without any tension. So does it mean that the caliper Needs replacing ?
Another possibility that I figured out is that could it be that the axle shaft on the driver side needs to be pushed all the way into the transaxle? the space in between the axle n transmission is about 4mm is that normal ?

 

eden, yes, there will be a little bit of play in the axle. This is what allows the wheel to travel up and down without forcing the axle into the transfer case/wheel bearing and causing damage to those components.

As for needing to replace a caliper, I would not say that you are at that point. My best advice would be to get out on a highway, get the car up to say 70-75 mph and cruise there for 5 minutes. Then get off the highway without using the brakes really hard, but at the same time not wasting time either. Then, with the car stopped, put the back of your hand against the center of both front wheels. They should both be about the same temp by feel. If one is much hotter than the other, then you most likely have a caliper issue and that is when I would start looking at replacing the hot caliper. The only exception to this is if the one wheel is at ambient temp. Then I would be replacing that caliper as that is the one that has an issue.