My Jag had developed a vibration at around 55 mph which you felt through the seat. I decided to replace the centre bearing as it was doing the classic whine when cold. It was very easy to do following the excellent procedure posted by a member here earlier. However when I drove the car on the motorway the vibration was still there and got even worse with speed.
I lifted the car up with our big forklift at work leaving the wheels free and ran it at idle in gear, I could see there was about a 2 mm runout on the thick forward section between the transfer box and centre bearing. I located a used prop shaft on B-parts which showed a picture of it on a clean but written off X type in Spain, It was delivered to Norway in less than a week for £250!
Today I swapped the propshaft and out of interest ran this one up while the car was up in the air and this one too had similar runout. Great I thought I have wasted my money, however on the trip home I had it up to 80 mph with no vibration,result!
My conclusion is that my original centre bearing had gone soft and was allowing the slight runout to throw the shaft about causing the vibration, and the replacement which wasn’t OE was even softer giving worse vibration. The new 2nd hand shaft had a centre bearing in better condition as it hardly moved when I pulled on the shaft so this contained any slight runout induced vibration as my original had done when it was new.
So if you replace the centre bearing make sure you get a good quality bearing.

 

Good result Norcat, it is nice when something finally works out.

 

I went & replaced the driveshaft carrier bearing. Wasn’t hard to do. Also replaced the headliner & the short hose between the fuel filler pipe & fuel tank.

Imagine how I felt when the whine was still there until I moved the steering wheel slightly to the right & the whine disappeared.

Wondering if you or anyone have any pictures or references I might look as being I don’t have a forklift.

Note: don’t go with a thicker foam-backed headliner. Pull the right rear shock & remove the 3 nuts securing the fuel filler pipe. Then spray silicone in the hose section. This made sliding the hose up the filler pipe & then down on the fuel tank easy.

 

I read your post and I need to replace my driveshaft carrier bearing. I know how to remove the driveshaft assembly but could you give me the procedure to replace the carrier bearing.

Much appreciate your help

 

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...earing-187890/

 

As someone mentioned already in a post above: Pictures of what you did and what you saw would be really good, especially as no one else would have a forklift on standby.
So I understood only "vibration" above 55mph - and then I was able to follow that thread again with Dell's comment, the driveshaft bearing, with which I agree.

I did have the same issue with the first X-type I bought: Serious vibrations all over the car, esp. on the steering wheel, when driving faster than about 75-80kmh, which is pretty much the same speed as yours. I fixed this myself, but I will never be able to confirm, if swapping simply the driveshaft bearing would have sufficed, because I just went ahead and replaced both complete front drive shafts incl. bearings on this 2.1L FWD X-Type, which solved the issue...

Note aside: Whenever a front drive shaft is taken off and put back on again, it would a a very good idea to replace the seal in the transmission/transfer-box at the same time, if you want to avoid takeing everything off again later, because there an oil leak developed there after swapping or removing drive shafts....

 

Thank you for this information. Much appreciate it.