Vibration as car gets to highway speed
 

We bought a 2004 X-Type with 70k miles on 17 Dec and are having a small problem. The first thing I did to the car was get the oil changed, tires balanced & rotated and an alignment. Right front Camber is -1.5 deg (out of spec) but no adjustment. The car drives fine and does not pull to one side or the other.
At about 55 mph I notice a vibration in the steering wheel that gets worse as I drive faster. At 70 mph the vibration can be felt in the whole car. I have looked through the FAQ's and can't really find anything except that maybe greasing the prop shaft center bearing might help. I am trying to avoid a huge repair bill if possible. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Paul

i think could be the balanced tired

Prop shaft center bearing doesn't really cause any vibration. You may want to make sure you got those wheels balanced properly. Factory wheels on your X-Type?

...bent rims?

The shop that did the balance & rotation seemed to do a good job. I was watching while they did the work and didn't notice any wobble while the tires were on the machine. They came out right on the money after balance. They are factory rims. Are they hard to get balanced right? Or do they bend easy and hard to notice? there is some curb rash on 2 of the rims but it really doesn't look bad enough to throw off the balance or bend the rim, but who knows? I'll get the rims checked just in case.

Thanks,
Paul

I had the same problem when I bought my car...when I checked the wheels I noticed the weights on the passenger tire had fallen off. I went and got them balanced and the shaking was greatly reduced.

I too am going through this problem, I get the same vibration at high speeds. I tried numerous of attempts to figure out what is going on... Here is my story...

Purchased the car two years ago with factory wheels that came with four different brand tires. No biggie, I was able to hit 120mph with no vibration at all and smooth ride.

I was in need of new tires a few months ago between wear and tear and a flat.. so I went with all four $650 Sumitomos, mounted balanced and aligned all at tire kingdom. Here is where I started getting vibrations at high speeds. So I take it back and they say it was fine but will redo it to insure the vibration goes. Still get vibrations...

So I got them to switch out the tires for the same priced Yokohamas, but I still had the same damn vibrations. They said one of my rims are bent so I take it to a bent rim repair shop and have them repair it and they inform me that I have 3/4 rims bent, so $280 later, I take it back to tire kingdom to get it balanced but I still have the same damn vibrations. Although my thoughts was if I had 4 different brand tires originally with no vibration and supposedly "bent" rims... how come it only started after putting $650 on these "bent" rims??

So I upgraded my wheel/tire package to 19" Niche Euros wrapped in Kumho tires... Still get the vibration...

So it can't be my wheel/tire setup... has to be something else and no one seems to be able to figure it out! Some guy told me it was my AWD going bad and transmitting vibrations to all four tires... another one told me its my shocks... but I don't get any bounce on bumps for my shocks to be bad.. I did the push on trunk bounce test and it seems good to me...

I'm about to bite the bullet and take it to the dealership to get it diagnosed to at least see whats wrong with it.

Anyone else know whats going on? Wheel bearings? control arms? dead rat in the shocks?

On a side note, the mechanic found the bolts holding the drive shaft loose to the touch, and one was missing... He tightened the bolts in the front and back of the drive shaft and it never changed anything... Don't know if that has to do with anything but no change..

Sounds like you're have something simular to me. I'm going to have the tires rebalanced this weekend and do the TC and rear diff drain & fill and see what happens. Hopefully this solves my problem if not I'll try something else. If by chance I get it figured out I'll post it here. Please do the same if you figure it out first.

Paul

...when I purchased my [used] vehicle, it was vibrating since day one. The dealership balanced my wheels and did an alignment. It was better but I wasn't totally satisfied because it still vibrated at 55 and above. Since I was closer another dealer, I took it there and they rebalanced it and did another alignment, and that's when they told me that the rims were bent.

I then took the vehicle back to the original dealership and they looked at the rims and determined that in fact it was bent. How come they didn't notice it the first time?? I think they were trying to pull a fast one on me. Anyway, they got the rims straightened and it was much better but not perfect. It's not "perfect" because the wheels mismatched and worn and cupped. I'm sure it will be a much smoother ride when I get new tires put on the vehicle. Hopefully.

Good luck dude.

I also had this exact same problem when I purchased my car mid-last year, at the exact same speeds. I lived with it because and got it balance and aligned but nothing changed. So, through research on here it sounded like the prop shaft needed replacement which I did not want to drop another $1K to do after I just purchased it. I finally figured out what it was, and thank god I did not replace the prop shaft (but the advice was still sound:)). I had a broken strut and worn shock that was found during state inspection. I had them replace that and the virbation is now totally 100% gone. The ride is completely different, I am amazed.

Hmmm... A strut and a shock. It'll have to wait till it warms up here since I don't have a heated shop, But Thank You. That wasn't one of the things on my list to check.

On a side note, I did the TC drain and fill this past weekend (didn't have time to do the diff.) and TRIED to lube the drive shaft bearing.

If anyone has NOT done a drain&fill on the TC DO IT ASAP!!!

Our car has 70k miles on it. When I removed the drain plug there was about 1/4" of semi hard grunge on the end of it and the lube was black, REALLY black and smelled a little burnt. The amount of lube I was able to get out of the TC was about 250ml. and I was able to get around 450ml back in. The capacity is supposed to be 550ml so there was probably 100ml still in it before the refill. I feel much better now and will do the drain & fill again this spring. The center bearing was a different story. I found the notches in the backside of the bearing but when I tried to get grease in there all it did was come back out around the needle. Maybe I did something wrong but I didn't have time to try anything else since I was borrowing a shop from the friend of a friend and it was getting late.

Oh well there is always next time.

Paul

70+mph is a good speed to be getting vibrations. You're simply going too fast. At 80+ the whole car will start to vibrate. Even though it's a luxury car, it's not exactly a Lambo, and they even start vibrating at around 100mph. It could also be your environment condition. Strong winds and stuff like that can cause resistance and thus, vibrations. That's the only thing I could think of.

A propshaft CAN!!! cause a vibration, BUT..... it's a different type of vibration then a steering wheel vibration. The propshaft will send a vibration throughout the whole car. You will feel it in the seat.

I get vibration in the whole car most of the times... I noticed that the driveshaft bolts are coming lose from time to time and have to have a shop use a torque wrench or whatever to tighten it up. Also I am missing a bolt from one of the holes in the driveshaft... It is also spitting out grease around the back end of the shaft. I had this damn thing replaced by Jaguar dealership in june 09... That is probably what is causing my vibrations huh? How do I get this properly diagnosed?

Just about every X type owner will have this issue at one point or another. I battled it for the better half of 5 years.

Road Force balancing seemed to really help - if that's not what you are getting, consider trying.

I bent a couple of the OEM wheels. Seem a little soft.

Have toe set to zero or as close to it when doing alignment. Helps even out the front tire wear and you don't eat the inner edges as much.

Vibration could be also be a wheel bearing, but I would look at your rotors first.

Quite frankly I think Jaguar did a crappy job with motor and tranny mount vibration suppression and it feeds its way into the whole car to some degree.

"The center bearing was a different story. I found the notches in the backside of the bearing but when I tried to get grease in there all it did was come back out around the needle."
I had the same thing happen to me when I tried to grease it. I tried moving the needle in or out with the same results.

So I'm taking my car to Jaguar to get a multi-point inspection done for $125 on monday so I will let you guys know what they say is causing my vibration maybe it can point everyone towards the right direction...

I'm not sure what performance cars you've been in! I've been in Lambos at speeds well in excess of 100 MPH (in Germany) and they don't vibrate. Indeed, the only car I've had this problem in (when it isn't a simple wheel balance issue) is the X-type. 80-90 MPH is the average driving speed in the UK (where I'm originally from) and non of my cars have had vibration issues.

Jag did a crappy job with this.

I have just had a similar problem with vibrations on my X-type 2,0 diesel -05. (FWD)
Problem is now fixed. It turned out to be the inner drive joint (is that the right word?) on one side being worn out. You could not buy the drive joint only. You have to buy the entire drive shaft. These are not cheap so I bought two used drive shafts and changed on both sides.

Vibrations are now solved.

Regards,

Tor

Took my car to the dealership to get a multi-point inspection today and they reported everything fine... Which isn't entirely true because I was getting vibration while driving along with some front end suspension noise that I get once in a while....

Good news is that they gave me one of the bolts that was missing from the driveshaft so I didn't have to pay for it. They wouldn't put it in so I took it to my tire guy right down the corner and he put it in for me...

To my surprise... my vibration is completely gone... I was going 75+ and I fell in love with my black cat all over again on how smooth it drove.. Before putting that bolt in I use to get vibrations at 50mph+

Hopefully it stays like this :)