I am new to owning an XJ(only had her for two months) so maybe this is normal, but considering the fact that it is a luxury car, I cannot think that it is!

Anyway, I will spin my yarn.

Just recently I have noticed as my speed passes 60mph that there is a little vibration felt through the steering wheel, and if I remove my hands from said steering wheel there is a little drift, but very little which in all honesty could be caused by the road surface, camber, etc!

It is the vibration that bothers me because everything else is so seamlessly smooth, as you would expect from an XJ.

Incidentally, the car is fitted with 20" wheels, not sure if this is relevant.

Please advise!

Regards

 

jagtwit, high speed vibrations are normally caused by 2 things. They are either bad alignment or bent rim. Both are somewhat easy to diagnose. Simply going and getting an alignment done is not that expensive. This is where I will tell you that odds are, the shop that does the alignment will not meet Jaguar specs as you are supposed to put 80 KG (160 pounds) (or something in that range) in the driver's seat to simulate the driver before aligning it. It doesn't change it much, but there is a slight difference. I have noticed that my XJ will start to get a wobble to it when the alignment is say 2 years old and it is out by just that little bit.

The second thing is a bent rim. Since you just got the car, knowing what happened to the rims is a big question. If you have 4 of the same size tires on the car (not all XJ's do), you can rotate the wheels front to back and back to front to see if the wobble goes away. if it does, one of teh rims on the back of the car now are bent. This is where a competent mechanic should be able to figure that out for you. Getting a rim straightened should not be that expensive should that be the problem.

If you are still having issues, then we have worn parts and this is going to get into more testing and watching things closely.

 

Hi Thermo,

Thank you for the feedback advice, but I have resolved the problem, and it was simple!
Before I did anything though, I put my thinking cap on and came up with the following: (1) It definitely couldn't be a bent rim because the car was fine when I bought it, and I haven't driven over any potholes or hit any curbstones,(2). I didn't think it could be alignment because the day before the car was delivered the wishbones were replaced and the steering geometry was set up. It was then MOT'd and passed.

With this in mind, I went back to basics, tyre pressure!

The correct tyre pressure is as we all know, very important, especially on the front tires, so I checked them, and guess what, they were very different.
Nearside 27psi, Offside 33psi

33psi is the correct pressure for my size of tyre, but with a 6 psi difference, this would definitely be felt in some way.

I inflated the nearside to match the pressure of the Offside and then took her for a test drive!

Problem resolved!

From what I have know about the new XJ X351 the steering is very sensitive, which is good, but it does mean that any imbalances in the mechanics or tyres will cause problems.

I think I have proved this!

 

True, I forgot about the tire pressures being a little sensitive on this car. Sometimes you need a refresh as to what some results of problems are. Atleast you have it fixed.