Having vibration at 40-50mph, only on load, on an 03 Disco II. Replaced front driveshaft with a new balanced one, as well as u-joints. Vibration is still there. There is a play about +/10 degrees in the front driveshaft with noise coming out of the transfer case. Is this normal? Could this be the source of the vibration? Is this common? Could it be the bearing? Can the bearing be replaced, or should I look for a replacement t-case?

 

The play is not bad, its the slack on the transfer case chain moving.

1. Rotate the tires front to rear.

2. Check the rear driveshaft.

3. Is it a noise or strictly a vibration? And do you feel it in your seat or the steering wheel?

 

I will rotate tires front to back. It is strictly vibration, felt on both seat and steering wheel.

 

Back and forth in the steering wheel? I would suspect tie rods if that is the case. If its just a general cibration I would suspect the rotary coupler in the rear driveshaft (where it attaches to the differential) or the rear driveshaft mounting flange vibration insulator.

These are just the most likely. There is a potential for worse case type scenarios.

When swapping the wheels around once you have one jacked up pry 12 o clock to 6 o clock on the bottom of the tires before removing it to see if you have any excessive play and that would potentially indicate bad ball joints. It definitely sounds like a front end issue as rear end suspension / bearing problems generally do not make the steering wheel shake.


Also, for redundancies sake, you did install the driveshaft with the double cardigan ( two joints) closest to the transfer case? Not even sure if its possible to put it in backwards.

 

The vibration is rotational and lateral in the steering wheel, and lateral and vertical in the seat. No for/aft vibration. I doubt very much that it is anything other than the driveline. I will check tire balance for thoroughness, though. The rear driveshaft insulator was replaced with a brand new one. I believe that the front driveshaft (bought new from Proshaft LLC, balanced) was installed with the double cardigan closest to the transfer case (I'll double check when I get home later today). I did notice, though, that my mechanic only marked the flanges on the diff and the t-case only, for both front and rear driveshafts, with no markings on the driveshafts themselves. I'm wondering if indexing was done correctly. I am going to begin the guessing game this weekend to see if both driveshafts were installed/indexed correctly. I really would like to have this fixed, because I love my truck, mand it only has 75K miles on it!

Thank you so much for your advice and help.

M.

 

Could also be a damage flywheel flexplate. This is located between the torque converter and the flywheel. Seen this many times.

https://landroverforums.com/forum/di...ed-help-66262/

 

As far as indexing, when installing a new driveshaft it 99% of the time doesn't matter. I've actually only dealt with one car where I removed the shaft and reinstalled without indexing and it caused a vibration. Normally it doesn't matter.