The steering wheel reach mechanism is one of those problem areas for our X300's. The plastic square drive shaft breaks from old age or the control module going senile and overdriving the reach motor. The "Auto" function seems to make it worse. The fix is to drop the column and replace the shaft with a heavier duty unit available from various suppliers. There are a few threads about it on here.

I had a different variation on the reach issue, and I thought I'd share it. The reach motor didn't change the position, but my reach wasn't seized or stuck. A firm pull or push of the wheel could change the position out or in. Even the arm pressure during a quick stop would push in the wheel, which was startling. A plastic-y grinding noise accompanied the movement.

I dropped the column and removed the reach motor. It worked fine on the bench. The square drive bar was intact, and made of steel, not the plastic I'd seen in other posts. And apparently it was stronger than my column, see below.

The reach motor's drive bar turns a threaded rod, which goes into a white plastic threaded insert attached to the front part of the column. As I suspected, the threads that "nut" had stripped out. What's more, the column had cracked where the nut attached.

The column assembly is very much NOT a field-serviceable unit, so I sourced another one from a scrapyard. I moved all the good parts onto it: wheel, airbag, tilt/reach motors, stalks etc. and then reinstalled it. The whole process required a few hours and lot of strong language but everything's working now.

Here's a photo to show what happened. View is looking down on the column from above. Left 3/4ths is the outer column that's attached to the car. Right 1/4 is the moving section that carries the tilt mechanism and the wheel.




So now I'm wondering if the plastic square drive was designed to be a weak link. Replacing it might be annoying, but it's a faster and cheaper than replacing the entire steering column.

Anyone else have this happen?
-Thos/MA

 

I see people mentioning about a metal rod that can be purchased to replace the original plastic one that breaks?
any links to where to find this

 

Hi Spud,
I ordered this one from Terry's Jaguar:
https://www.terrysjag.com/product//JLM12187C.html
USD46.00 plus shipping.

ThosMA

 

cool, will keep that in mind if i can't find one local.
atm i am after some motors for my drivers seat also and it is looking more and more likely i will need to shop in US or UK to get what i need.

 

One of the translation directions of the steering column has a sensor / gearbox package that binds attached to the bottom side exposed different then the main steering column assembly

the sensor / gearbox assembly can be simply detached , cleaned and lubed without bothering the main works

There is a TSB on upsizing the motor , this for the tilt

10-12 (jagrepair.com)

the sensor assembly is by the lower arrow in the pic and it just clips on





the steering column must be clocked before reinstalling the sensor and the column can be repositioned with a battery charger back and forth on the gray clip on connectors in the top pic

It is a high current connection so arcing hazard