Hi guys,

I have (maybe two) strange things happening with my TD6. It has 158k miles and is still on the first gearbox. The towbar was fitted by me two years ago and I never towed something heavy since that.

Since last year I have a drone starting from ca. 35mph which is in my opinion coming from the front. It is also present in neutral so I would rule out the gearbox. I changed the wheel bearings, differential oil (which looked good) and tried different tires. Nothing helped. This weekend I was on the lift while running and tried to heat something under the car. Everything sounds fine in my opinion. I read about the center prop shaft bearing so I dismantled the heat shield and the rubber from the bearing looked still good.

Then I noticed something which is maybe connected but I'm not quite sure if that's the case. In drive and while on the brake, when I turn the steering wheel left on nearly full lock a heavy vibration starts. That is not the case while steering to the right. I noticed the engine moves about 2cm to the left when steering left. Does that point to broken engine mounts? Apart from that the seem fine.

I would be very grateful for hints what to check, I'm out of ideas and it's really annoying me because the car runs great apart from that.

Cheers
Gary

According to RAVE manual the engine control module applies vacuum to both front engine mounts on idle to 'soften' vibrations and at other 'conditions' not fully explained. On full steering lock my TD6 loads up the engine and I do get a slight vibration through the body. You may have a problem with lack of vacuum to your engine mounts - the reason I suggest this is that according to RAVE on the TD6 the ECM controls the engine mounts based on the following parameters:
Engine Speed 900RPM
Vehicle Speed 60 Km/h / 36 MPH

Based on your comment about the noise starting at 35 MPH that to me is more than a coincidence?

RAVE does not explain in detail the operation but if you have access to RAVE then this topic is covered in the Engine-TD6, Description and Operation section starting on page 12-1-15

You might want to start by checking the vacuum lines from the actuator which I think is located under the inlet manifold (not easy to access) and from there a single hose then connects to a T piece that runs to each mount.

On idle I would expect to feel vacuum at each hose connection where it connects to the engine mount Current: 2003 TD6 HSE. 161,000 miles
Previous 1993 Classic 3.9

Thanks for the answer!
I went forward and changed the engine mounts as the were close to being shot. They were already separated from the metal housing around the edges. This didn't change the drone noise unfortunately. I'm suspecting the differential as the noise is coming from the front, not from the middle of the car where the center prop shaft bearing ist located.