Violent shaking

[golfindia]

Hi
My 2001 X5 3.0TD Sport has started to shake violently on occasion. I have tried searching related threads but none match.

The problem seems to be the brakes being applied to the near side front wheel, on and off as if by ABS, causing the shake and the wheel to get hot. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to when it does this. It is not when braking, it does not appear to be speed dependent and most of the time it drives fine. I can find no play in any of the bushings bearings and there are no warning lights showing on the dash.

My thinking is the wheel speed sensor is indicating that this wheel is slipping and the brakes are coming on to slow it, possible? Have briefly looked at removing the sensor, but it seemed very tight. Plan is to have another go and swap the two front sensors over to see if the fault follows it.

Anyone have other ideas or advice?

Cheers
Dave

[golfindia]

Update on the situation.

Tried to remove the speed sensors, eventually got the near side one out, it was a bit grubby and very tight.

The off side one was even tighter and after ages of trying to coax it out I managed to break it! Two new ones on order and I have left the broken end in to prevent crud getting in there. Yet to figure out the best way of removing it!

The fact that the sensor is not now connected has caused the warning lights to come on, which as the system now knows there is a problem has stopped it working and therefore stopped the shaking, or so it appears.

It does however seem to have confused the gear change. I'm guessing the gear change takes some info from the speed sensors?

Hopefully the parts will arrive tomorrow and I will get it back together over the weekend. Will update on progress in case it helps somebody else out.

Any info more than welcome.

Cheers

Dave

[shadrack]

i would drill it and screw a srcew in and try pulling it out with that, if you try removing the driveshaft it will likely be siezed into the hub and when removing a siezed in drive shaft it tends to pull the wheel bearing apart, i have first hand experience of this on my old x5

[X5Sport]

Gear change will use the wheel speed sensors to assist in the change profile, so as you correctly assumed, disconnecting them will have some (minor) effects on the change points.  If all else fails you can always go into manual mode....

Did you see any sign of the DSC or ABS warning lights when the 'shuddering' was occurring?  I had thought that if the system had activated you ought to see either one of them showing up.  Once the car is all back together again, a fault code read might be useful to see what shows up.

[golfindia]

Drilling and screwing it is, hopefully the new parts will arrive on Monday.

No there were no signs of the warning lights whilst the shuddering was happening.

Will report on results asap.

Thanks for the info

Dave

[X5Sport]

Is the actual brake disc OK?  Warped discs could cause the issue and are a fairly common occurrence.  You may be able to check run-out with a flat piece of metal placed on something to keep it against the disc and then rotate the wheel.  Use a bright light to see if the gap changes.  A runout guage is the best way, but most folks don't have one in their tool chest 

[rjkc600]

Wouldn't warped disc only judder/shake when braking? Edit: read the original post again, and the problem is when braking. 

If the nearside wheel gets hot then maybe that brake calliper is binding a little. Will create more heat and id expect it could upset that wheel speed reading too.

Other candidates for shaking at speed are wheel balancing.  Maybe a wheel weight has fallen off.  Unbalanced wheels are very noticeable as tyres near the end of their life.

[shaun668]

Hi,

I have a 2003 3.0d sport and mine did exactly the same. At first I thought the wheels were out of balance, I had this corrected but the problem was with the brake caliper, it was sticking  sometimes and causing violent shuddering. This was very intermittent and got worse after about 4 weeks.

I took the car to the garage, the problem was a seized caliper I had new calipers, brake discs and pads. Car is fine now, but not my wallet.

[golfindia]

Just to update everyone.

Finally got the old wheel speed sensors out, drilling and screwing sort of worked but on one side I still had to carefully grind arond the edges with the dremmel to get it out.

New sensors in, all warnings light out, gear change perfect, no juddering, problem solved  ::)

Seems it was a fault in the sensor causing the tranction control to try and slow that wheel.

Have done many miles since the replacement and it has been perfect!.

[graemeX5]

Sounds like a bit of nightmare and wells one on getting it sorted yourself 

[jaynana]

sounds like a great piece of diagnosis and fixing. most importantly diy!

i had a different (or common) sort of judder when braking which i think is now sorted. there's a different thread on it, need to do a bit more testing and will update the thread if its sorted out.. so that if others face the issue they would know..