Has anyone experienced the failure of the front wheel knuckle? My passenger side one failed this weekend and could have caused a bad accident if it had happened at even modest speed as the wheel just flopped over.

The car is a 3.0 diesel XF, 60 plate with 137k on the clock. No one seems to have seen this before. Any ideas or thoughts?

The local garage (non specialist) suggested replacing the other wheel knuckle as well.

 

I see the car has "some millage" on the odo, that said, whoever you had been using for an annual maintenance and a multi-point inspection overlooked the upcoming failure.

 

Despite the mileage, one would not normally expect a failure like this unless the rubber boot protecting the ball-joint has split or gone missing. I saw a similar failure a few years ago in our village on a Japanese Jeep lookalike. The owner told me he had noticed a squeaking noise, and had phoned about the problem to his local garage who told him to bring the car in on the Monday of the following week. The joint failed on the Sunday !! Your garage need to check out the other side and if necessary, you should replace the other ball joint as well as the failure. This could be expensive, because it is very difficult to swap out the joints due to the swan-neck construction of the hub carrier. Obviously the supplier to Jaguar, has the right tooling on the production line !. The ball joints are available separately for about £28, the full hib carrier with the joint is an eye-watering £365 !! A good-enough incentive for you to try just replacing the ball-joint.

If your local garage is a non-specialist they may not be able to swap out the ball-joints, but a Jaguar specialist may have invested in the necessary tooling.