Hi everyone,

I have a 2013 Jaguar XF (SC) which used to ride really well. Loved how it glided over everything but now all of a sudden, the ride's become really bumpy. It seems like it detects every contour of the road, every minor bump and I just can't feel that smoothness anymore. Sometimes I feel like I will be thrown off the seat if I don't wear a seat belt. After reading some of the posts here, I first took the car to a nearby Firestone to get the wheels aligned and they told me it was within spec, nothing wrong. So next day I went in again to see if they could check the tires and let me know if everything was good. I asked them to check for any bends in the wheel as well. They called me back saying the front wheels were shot and that they need to be replaced. When I asked them about the bent wheel, they told me that they did not check that since they noticed the wheels were bad. This kinda left a bad taste in my mouth, I felt like they just wanted me to buy new tires so just told me that. There's about 7/32 on all of them, so I'm not sure what they meant when they said the wheels were bad. I didn't bother spending more time with these guys because I had an annual check up that
was coming up and figured I would ask the dealer to check. They did check the car ride and said they didn't notice anything wrong and that the suspensions and everything looked good. So I'm kind of at a loss here as to what to do, like I don't want to just buy tires for the heck of it and realize it was for nothing. The rides really putting me off ho much ever I try to ignore it. It's just feeling like no one would actually take a good look at it until I tell them where to look and I have no clue where to. So I just wanted to check if anyone here would have an idea. Any help would be appreciated.


Thanks in advance!

 

Take the car to another specialist tyre and wheel shop and get them to check the wheels again.
If they confirm one or more bent/damaged wheels then you need to get that fixed.
The OEM XF SC wheels especially the 20" ones such as Nevis are notorious for bending/buckling/cracking when they hit a pot hole.
If the wheel damage is not too bad it can often be repaired for not a lot of $, but you may need new wheels.
The OEM wheels are not cheap but you may get lucky and find one or two on eBay for not too much. But of course if you buy used wheels on eBay you take a risk that they are just as damaged as your existing wheels.
The other option is to buy new after market wheels, I bought a set of Coventry Whitley "hypersilver" years ago and they were great and didn't cost a fortune, see here: https://www.coventrywheels.com/Jagua...-rims-whitley/

 

If your wheels are bent, you will feel a lot of shaking, not just bumps being amplified. If you tires are bad, same thing, unless they are way over pressured.

So, you might have a problem with one or more shocks. How many miles on the car?

I had the rear shocks go out twice on the rear of my grey XF. I changed them myself, which wasn't too bad of a job. But the shocks on my white XF are all still original and are fine. They are both 2011, but the grey have 75K miles now and the white has 55K.

Bad shocks will mess up the ride like you described.

 

Do you see any alerts on the center display? The CATS adaptive suspension may not even show any errors, so it has to be checked. If any of the shocks don't receive a signal, or if that signal is not being sent, for any reason, the entire system defaults to a rock hard ride. Yes, this is stupid.

 

Think this is one to take step by step. Maybe you mis-typed but you said they told you the wheels were bad. Starting place for sure. As others have mentioned they bend easily. I have an XF SC with the 20inch and have had to straighten them several times. Should be about $80-100 per wheel to get them professionally straightened and a good place will get them spot on. Start with that, road force balance the tyres (and replace tyres if they are damaged, bubbled etc) and see where you stand

Shocks would be next in my view. And a full suspension check for the various bushings, control arms etc.

Also consider wheel bearings

Nothing special on this - similar to many other cars. May take you some time but will be worth it!

 

Thank you for your reply! My car has the 18" wheels and I will look for some specialist shops that take care of wheels and tires. I think it's mostly the rear side as I can feel that part of the car jump whenever I go over a bump.The Coventry wheels look good but I really like the OEM ones, I will have to see if I can find any incase I have to buy one. Thank you for sharing the link!

 

I don't think there is a lot of shaking and I really hope it's not the shocks, can't imagine what the bill would be for that. I wish I could just repair these on my own but kinda scared of taking risks with these sorta things. My car has about 45,000 miles on it. But I will take it to a mechanic to see if it's the shocks. Thank you for your reply!

 

I don't see any alerts on the display. I'm sorry I didn't understand the second sentence. Do I have to specifically check for errors related to the CATS suspension even if there are no errors popping up on the display? If so, I will have to go to the dealership and get that done, not sure if local mechanic can do it. Yes, this does sound stupid, what a pita. Thank you for your suggestion!

 

They did yes. But I really don't think they actually checked for this. This Firestone is notorious for not actually checking for the actual stuff and kinda throwing things at the wall till something sticks. I just went there since it was like a mile from my place and I could just stop by. But I have not ruled this out either, I want to get another opinion on this before I pull the trigger. Don't want to spend a few hundred dollars on this and realize it did not fix the issue. Sorry, what does road force balance the tires mean? Is it the same as wheel balance? I will get the shocks and other aspects of the suspension checked as well. Hopefully all of this can be checked in one go. Thank you for your suggestions!

 

Slight problem there, the XF doesn't have the CATS suspension system, rather it has the Adaptive (or Active) Suspension system.
And yours quite possibly doesn't have it, easiest way to check is to open the bonnet/hood and look at the tops of the front shocker/damper mounts. If you have wiring plugs on top of those mounts you have adaptive suspension, if not you don't.

 

Right, it changed on the 5.0 cars. Whatever the name, its something that can drastically change suspension feel the way OP described so I threw that out there.

 

You need to take the car to an independent repair shop specializing in Jaguar/Land Rover or at least european imports. I just mentioned the electronic suspension that your car is likely equipped with, as something to mention to the service advisor that could be the problem and should be checked.

Don't go the dealer, it looks like you should be able to find a local reputable shop to hear you out. Good luck.
https://www.jagshops.com/near/columbus-oh/

 

My 2015 XF has 20" rims from an F-Pace, though it originally came a set of 20" aswell. I can confirm that the ride is quite harsh and any imperfection in the road will come through the steering wheel and seat. Mind you, mine is supposedly equipped with the adaptive "sport" suspension, but the ride is twice as harsh as my sister's Toyota Corolla. As far as "smotheness" is concerned, it is quite smooth in the sense that it ride evenly and quite stable on good clean roads. My car isn't sagging from the rear or front nor is there any noise from the suspension. Is there another way I can diagnose bad suspension components? That is if there is anything wrong with them to begin with.

 

Road force is just a more sophisticated wheel balancing. It essentially pushes v hard on one spot on the wheel as it is spun around to simulate the weight of the car on the wheel. Then you balance against that. Can get a better overall balance and identify issues in the stiffness of the tire that you might otherwise miss

Most valuable for low profile tires. If you have 18inch then less likely to make a difference vs normal balancing

 

Thank you for the information and the link you shared! I will go check these out. I have no idea how or what a CATS or adaptive suspension is, so I will go research this as well, would be good information to have.

 

Oh okay, I will just ask the guys at a local shop if they can do that too, just to rule it out. Thank you for the info!

 

If your car rides nice and smooth on smooth pavement, I wouldn't hold your breadth that doing anything to the wheels and tires will help with the bumpy ride when the road become rough, especially if these are the same wheels that were on the car when it used to ride nice and smooth over bumps.

My money is on shocks.

 

What tires are on the car? I've noticed that on a number of cars I've had that there is a place in the life of some tires where the ride changes in a very short period of time. I get new tires and all is well.

You might do some research on Tire Rack, etc. to see if others are complaining of such issues.