Clicking noise and vibration

[Christian Eilersen]

Hi all,

I have 2 problems with my defender 300 tdi from 1995..

Problem 1.

The car suffers from a rather strong vibration when driving at approx 70Kph/50mph.

The vibration have been there for a while. But seems to have gotten a bit worse lately.

At lower or higher speeds the vibration stops. The vibration seems to come from the front of the vehicle.

Unrelated to the vibration problem I have changed the folowing during the last month:

- complete front axle incl. front dif.

- both props with new UJ's in both ends. Have checked both. There are a bit of play at the front of the T-box, but I think it is supposed to be there.

- Steering damper, droparm/w. ball joint.

The car have relatively new polybushes all around - all seems to be in good condition.

As mentioned the above havent had any positive effect on vibration. I have switched wheels front to back, to discover any ballancing issues - with no luck.

Problem 2:

The car have during the last couple of days picked up a light "click" noise, when applying the brakes or when running over bumps a slow speed. The click only appears once when the brakes are applied - it sounds like the pads are loose, but they seem to sit quite firmly in the calipers. The sound doesnt appear when braking in reverse. The sound seems to come from the front of the vehicle.

any ideas on both problems are greatly appreciated

Kind regards

Christian

[Les Henson]

Have you had the tracking checked? Could also be little or no swivel preload.

Les.

[Guest]

I would say a vibration at 50mph would be a wheel balancing problem, espicialy if you are able to drive through it, It's easy to loose a weight and the resulting vibration can look like many other issues, if they are all out swaping front to back will not change anything.

Jason.

[Christian Eilersen]

Hi Les,

Since I have changed the complete front axle, and the vibration was there before and after, I presumed I wasn't looking at any problems there. But ofcourse, it could be that I have tracking or swivel issues on both the old and the new axle - after all, we are talking about Land Rover here :-)

I will have a quick look at the tracking tonight - I should be able to check for major tracking issues, with some basic geometri with a piece of string, right?

If that doesn't solve anything, I think I will start with having the wheels re-ballanced as Jason suggests, before I throw myself at any complex swivel operations :-)

Any suggestions to what might cause my clicking noise?

- I realised that if I apply light pressure to the brakes, then there is sometimes a continuing low cliking noise, at the rate of the wheels turning - I guess that definitively concludes that it is the brake pads that is the trouble.. Strange since the pads look fine, and doesn't appear to be loose.

/Christian

Have you had the tracking checked? Could also be little or no swivel preload.

Les.

[nicks90]

maybe a silly question - maybe not.

the front prop, are the UJs in the right phase? eg the front prop on a 300tdi should have both UJs out of phase by about 45 degrees iirc. Could be that they are fully lined up (like in series and earlier props) and this will cause a vibe - especially if it has a lift.