Been a long time, hope everyone on these boards have been well.

Starting with a common issue, my transfer case needs replacing. There is a raspy, scrapy noise in the cabin (but seemingly not from the engine bay) whenever the transmission is under load, but does not produce this noise when coasting/idle. It first started on the way back from a rather lengthy and mountainous highway drive (with a fair amount of weight inboard).

Is this a pulverized transfer case chain? Or is it rattling from burnt out fluid/lack of fluid? Just wondering the scope of the damage.

To extend the problem, the central locking has gone. A guy from a garage said it might be the abs sensors that is causing the problem, but that does not seem to make sense. In any case, I feel that the transfer case is messing with the power delivery, which is in turn messing with the various motion sensors in the wheels.

Has anyone had this sort of issue before? From an '06 3.0L 4dr owner.

Any help input would be quite helpful! Thanks

 

Jagtype, first off, there is no "chain" in the transfer case. It is all gear driven. So, the idea of a noisy chain is out of the question. I guess my first start would be with a fluid change of the transfer case. If you have by chance hurt the transfer case, this will normally result in metal shavings which will be found on the end of the drain plug (magnet built in).

The other thing that I would check is the centering bearing under the car (in line with the front seats). This is known to be a failure item and can lead to the noises that you are hearing. You can get under the car and put your hands on the shaft. If you can wiggle it side to side and see movement, then the bearing is in need of replacement. A few option with how you want to handle that.

As for the ABS causing the central door locking not to work correct. First off, do you have the ABS light? If no, then the ABS system is functioning like it should. That is definitely not the source of your problem. The doors lock once the speedo signal rises above like 5 KPH (or 3 MPH). So, if your speedo is working, then the central lock should be doing what you are after. With this being said, if you are finding that the doors do not want to lock/unlock using the remote, then you have 2 potential issues. The more obvious one being that there is a problem with the keyfob. This can be easily proven good/bad by using a second keyfob and seeing if the problem only exists with the one keyfob. If both fobs exhibit the same condition, then it is possible that one of the door lock position switches is giving you grief. As I recall, the right rear door switch is the more likely failure. What you can try doing is unlocking all the doors and the one door at a time cycle the door lock manually say 5 times between lock and unlock (stopping in the unlock position). From there, attempt to lock the doors. What you will find is that the door with a sticky button will allow you to lock the doors a few times before it will start acting up again, but the other doors will not have any affect on how often the doors will not lock.

 

Thank you for the reply, Thermo.

If I were to wiggle the propshaft to and fro, would that not risk further damage to the diff bearing/housing?

I will have to double check the dash and reassess the instrumentation. It has been awhile since Ive even started the ignition, so hopefully nothing has degraded further.

As for the options... is there a way to avoid getting an entire transfer case assembly?

 

Wiggling the prop shaft back and forth is going to be a lot easier on the car than what you are doing to it driving it and having the engine slam it around using the engine power. It is not going to hurt anything.

As for the transfer case, if you look around, some members have located the replacement bearings that you can drop the transfer case, take it to a shop and they can overhaul the case for you with those parts. Just make sure that they properly set the pre-load on the bearings. This was an issue with the early cars (ie, 2001.5 to early 2004) which lead to early bearing failure if you were hard on the gas a lot. This was part of the reason why Jaguar went to a different style transfer case starting the later part of 2004.