Here’s’ a symptom to diagnose..

Severe juddering coming through steering column on Rangee. ..Steering wheel seriously shaking 10 degrees off centre. Vibration felt in passenger seat. So bad car cannot be driven over 50mph..


History. March 2005 Range Rover Vogue TD6 L322

I have had the vehicle from new and sold to my brother in November 2015. Car has been well serviced and looked after from new.

Car has then been stood since December after selling to my younger brother.

The only juddering I experienced in my owner ship was the damaged heat shield touching the prop shaft and very intermittent. Replaced the heat shield I have check this and 100% not damaged.

My Brother however in his limited time of owner ship, has hit a 100mm deep pot hole and had kwik fit reset tracking aftet this episode he also hit a deep puddle of water at speed and stated any other car would have flipped!!

I popped down yesterday to visit him..

1. Drove car violent shaking worse at 50mph but eases off as speed increases but does not go away…no vibration until 50mph..
2. Checked underbody heat shield – 100% Ok
3. Changed gears no issues vibration constant throughout gear change.. not gearbox issue. Car drives fine other than violent shaking..
4. Engine superb..
5. All lubricants 100%
6. Took car to Tyre centre, balanced all tyres (This was my initial diagnosis) and swapped rear left to front left and same on right. Tyre pressures 36 PSI (Stood and watched accuracy of wheel balancing )
7. Drove car away and low and behold Vibration still there??
8. My limited experience in this problem, is vibration is definitely from front axle…possibly

• Stuck calliper (But vibration happens when not braking could it be ESP Fault kicking in brakes??)
• When braking heavily car pulls to left slightly (Never did this when I had car)
• Thread on tyres are well above legal limit and was thinking about a flat spot on tyres from being parked..for three months in same spot? Have rotated tyres yesterday
• Steering ram seems fine on full lock left and right no oil leaks or squeaks or visible and physical resistance on steering?
• I was also thinking about red hot discs hitting the puddle and potentially warping???
Kwik fit checked ball joints tracking suspension etc as a safety check all ok.
Nothing un towards or visually out of place on underbody of Vogue.

Has any one come across this violent shaking before??

Sounds very much like a caliper issue, had the exact same on my old car, was undriveable until fixed. Take it for a run, doesn't need to be far, get out & put your hand on the road wheels in turn. The one that's hot is the one with a sticky caliper, not an expensive fix, available from Dan @ Duckworths.

I had such vibration with a rear calliper sticking. Go for a run then squirt water on each of the brake discs. The one that steams is the faulty one.

could be wheel balance.

Thanks Chaps.

My initial diagnosis was wheel balance. Eliminated this.

But many comments on sticking caliper so will get straight onto it. Thanks for excellent feed back.
Appreciated.

I had exactly the same experience with my classic RR, at about 50mph the front of the car shuddered and the steering wheel vibrated. I investigated as you have done, and discovered the following:-

Old classic RR's have live front and rear axles, the front ones have a large chromed half sphere on each end of the axle casing, in this is the CV joint to transmit drive to the wheels.
The wheel hub is secured to the half sphere's via upper and lower king pins that rotate in a bearing housing that is on the sphere (above and below) and are preloaded via shims. I discovered the upper king pin on the near side was loose and pemitted the wheel to vibrate along its vertical axis. When the pins were re-shimmed vibration ceased.

On the L322

I would check the front lower arm and tie rod, ball joints , fixings etc and wheel bearing for play.
I suspect something has worked loose, shifted or at the worse broken. The wheels arnt exctly mini size, thats a hell of a lot of mass spinning at ---rpm.

Hope you get it sorted

Peter

ive seen plenty of posts regarding sticking calipers, but not after a pothole. i sometimes see other cars with wobbling wheels. you would think that its the the wheel . but sometimes people buckle tha actual hub itself. this is normally removable and holds the wheel bearing(s) they are changed as a whole when said bearings fail you can pick these up secondhand, on ebay. as you only buying to disproove etc. if you are sure its not the wheel, as you moved them about, it is possible its the hub.
( -meaning the five stud 'disc carrier'. fixed to the drive shaft. )
is it possible to get it on a four post lift, (swing arms on jacking points,) with wheels hanging, to run it in gear, to see the trueness of each wheel.

Have you checked steering rack for play and movement?

Hi, I have what sounds like exactly the same symptoms on my L322.

last night was driving into town, after about 20 mins severe vibration through the steering wheel starts, gets worse quickly so we turn around and head back home at less than 50mph. It did smell a bit of something burning also.

This afternoon, took it for a short run and it is fine, no vibration. All four discs very hot (steam if water sprayed on them) but that could be normal, it is hilly around here. None of the disks seemed noticeably hotter than the others.

Any further ideas or suggestions re what to look at?

To the OP - have you fixed yours yet??


Cheers

Jerry

Update: jacked all four wheels up and nearside front definitely binding so I will try replacing the caliper. Not sure how that can explain such severe vibration though...?

Cheers

Jerry

Think it's something to do wth the vehicle weight, they're heavy old buses!

I had this with my 2004 4.4. I put the juddering down to the interplay between one front wheel rolling free and the other braking due to the seized caliper. Only Range Rovers since 1988

I had a seized o/s front calliper recently, same symptoms, severe steering judder. Very nasty smell, oh and lots of smoke (cooked pads). Drives:
2010 FFRR TdV8 Vogue - Stornoway Grey
2010 FFRR TdV8 Vogue SE - Zermatt Silver
1998 BMW E36 M3 GTII

Forgot about that , had mine on fire before

Thanks everybody for the help

I have a new caliper arriving soon so hopefully that will fix it..... I am supposed to be doing a 1000km trip to UK this weekend!!

Any tips re bleeding the brake caliper once it's on? Any special procedure that needs to be followed...?


Cheers

Jerry