Intermittant Driveline Vibration

[cchidzey]

Strange one this, my 06 D5 185 has an intermittant driveline vibration.
Was driving along the motorway at 70 fine, slowed down and when speeding up again it developed quite a severe vibration / judder, as in loose wheel or blow-out vibration. I knocked it into neutral to see if it's engine/transmission and it stayed in line with the driveline speed, rather than the engine speed.
Pulled over, checked everything, all tyres good, nothing obvious out of place underneath, not hot brakes/hubs etc.
Jumped back in, it pulled away and accelerated perfectly upto 70 mph, and was fine for the next 250 miles.

I might be imagining it, but the trip computer seemed to be showing lower MPG than normal up until that point, after I set off again it was back at the usual 36ish I usually get on the motorway.

What could cause an intermittant vibration on the driveline?

[gmonag]

Check again for binding brakes - feel the wheel temperatures. A binding brake (seized caliper) can produce exactly these symptoms.

[Harley Dave]

Originally Posted by cchidzey

Strange one this, my 06 D5 185 has an intermittant driveline vibration...

Pulled over, checked everything, all tyres good, nothing obvious out of place underneath, not hot brakes/hubs etc...

Looks like he has already checked for that

Cheers

Dave

[gmonag]

I did spot that, but I had this issue last year and the wheel/hub was not hot the first couple of times I checked. Then finally after getting home, as I got out of the car I smelled something hot and the rear left wheel was too hot to touch.

[Whizzer]

Perhaps not a severe vibration /judder... but from my experiences over the last few years of XC90 ownership....
The XC90 AWD system I think are very sensitive to slight variations in tyre circumference caused by different makes of tyres, different wear, or even a slow puncture.
This has caused no end of trying to chase down what the problem is (including being convinced it was the prop shaft and replacing at quite an expense to no avail)!
New tyres all round ( it needed them) helped.
Next I was thinking along lines of transfer box /angle drive as being the culprit.
I ended up replacing fluids in the transfer box, rear diff and Haldex which certainly improved matters @ 150k miles.

As Greg has stated check for brakes - I have also had a rear calliper siezed - very hot / smell etc.. and a noticeable drop in average fuel consumption - although I did not notice any vibration etc.. at that time.

Nb., I have a spare prop shaft!

Simon

[cchidzey]

Just an update on this gents, I had to let it get worse before it became apparent.

Offside rear brake caliper, piston not retracting.

As said above, the first few times it happened it didn't really generate any heat in the brakes, but as it got worse it started to.

Wheel off, eagle beaks to try and push the piston back, very very tight (the sliders were fine, it was the piston in the casting that was stuck).
Got it back a few mm, enough to free the disc up, and nipped the flexi with some little long nose vise grips.

Just to get me home (I was 150 miles from home, and knew if I rang recovery it'll have cooled down by the time they got there and find no fault).

New caliper on, new pads, left the disc as it was only a couple of months old and hadn't suffered huge overheating (well it hadn't changed colour) jobs a good'un.

Thanks for the advice.

[Harley Dave]

Thanks for closing this out and glad the problem/solution was suggested within the thread by gmonag (and dissed by me...)

Cheers

Dave

[giw12]

Worth doing the other? When mine went the other followed a few weeks later.......