Driveshaft problems

Hi All,

Freelander 2 sport 10 plate - manual drive

Female owner - I’ve had a problem with vibration at between 50/60. It’s been in the garage for investigations and have been told both front driveshafts need replacing. I’ve been quoted £600 plus!

I’ve no idea if this is right or not or whether the garage are just seeing a quick buck. Would be really grateful for any feedback on whether this is a fair price!

Thanks in advance

Find another garage to get a second opinion.

Pippa2002 said:

Hi All,

Freelander 2 sport 10 plate - manual drive

Female owner - I’ve had a problem with vibration at between 50/60. It’s been in the garage for investigations and have been told both front driveshafts need replacing. I’ve been quoted £600 plus!

I’ve no idea if this is right or not or whether the garage are just seeing a quick buck. Would be really grateful for any feedback on whether this is a fair price!

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

How many miles on the clock?

I was trying to avoid extra labour cost for another garage to investigate, hence my post on here as l thought someone might be able to say either way.

127000 miles on the clock

Pippa2002 said:

Hi All,

Freelander 2 sport 10 plate - manual drive

Female owner - I’ve had a problem with vibration at between 50/60. It’s been in the garage for investigations and have been told both front driveshafts need replacing. I’ve been quoted £600 plus!

I’ve no idea if this is right or not or whether the garage are just seeing a quick buck. Would be really grateful for any feedback on whether this is a fair price!

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

I’ve usually found that when vibration occurs at certain speed ranges that it could be the wheels need balancing or a tyre problem. Try changing the wheels around, or like Nodge says, try another garage.

Pippa2002 said:

I was trying to avoid extra labour cost for another garage to investigate,

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The fact they charged for a diagnosis would ring the alarm bells for me. A quick drive and 10 minutes on a lift for a look will cost them nothing.

Pippa2002 said:

hence my post on here as l thought someone might be able to say either way.

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Vibrations are notoriously difficult to diagnose without the vehicle to look at.

But in my experience, drive shafts normally cause vibration at slow speeds, and normally when accelerating.


Higher speed vibrations are normally due to something that's heavy, running out of balance. The front to back propshaft on the FL2 is 1 place where such a problem exists. It's support bearing rubber mount can fail, allowing the propshaft to run off centre and vibrate. If that's what they're quoting for, then they're taking the **** on the cost.

There are a host of other potential causes to high speed vibrations, like mismatched tyres, out of balance tyres, tyres that have changed shape and so on. It could even be a slightly dodgy injector, giving a misfire at a certain engine speed.

It could be the Haldex coupling is on its way out, as often the essential fluid changes are missed. Although those normal bang and judder when cornering tightly.

But I feel a second opinion is definitely worth while, maybe getting the front to back propshaft is in perfect condition.

Thanks so much for the very detailed reply, very much appreciated.

Tyres are all new good quality within the last year and all match, I’ve had them checked and balanced which didn’t solve the problem unfortunately.

Vibration isn’t coming through the steering wheel but through the floor.

The garage is stating the right and left driveshafts need replacing and it’s not the Propshaft.

I’ll take it too another Garage and see what they say. Is it best to take it to one that specialises in Land Rover to get an accurate diagnosis?

Pippa2002 said:

The garage is stating the right and left driveshafts need replacing and it’s not the Propshaft.

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How did they come to that conclusion I won't?

Pippa2002 said:

Vibration isn’t coming through the steering wheel but through the floor.

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Which again says front to rear propshaft to me. After all the bearing that fails, is actually bolted to the floor.

Pippa2002 said:

I’ll take it too another Garage and see what they say. Is it best to take it to one that specialises in Land Rover to get an accurate diagnosis?

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An LR specialist is always you best bet, although potentially not a budget option.

Thanks again for all the help... knowing nothing about the mechanics of a car I am reliant on the Garage's information unfortunately!! I've also recently been caught out when a garage said my rear brakes needed replacing when in actual fact the problem was a front wheel bearing which needed replacing! Thereby rear brakes were changed when they didn't need to be. So please excuse my distrust in garages.

There is a LR garage around 20 miles away (I live in a little village) so will give them a call and see what they say!

Thanks again...

Pippa2002 said:

Thanks again for all the help... knowing nothing about the mechanics of a car I am reliant on the Garage's information unfortunately!! I've also recently been caught out when a garage said my rear brakes needed replacing when in actual fact the problem was a front wheel bearing which needed replacing! Thereby rear brakes were changed when they didn't need to be. So please excuse my distrust in garages.

There is a LR garage around 20 miles away (I live in a little village) so will give them a call and see what they say!

Thanks again...

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I agree about mistrusting garages however at that mileage if not already done they probably would have needed replacing anyway so hopefully that will ease the pain a little. I recently replaced the rear brakes on my van at 85k miles.
You should ask everyone you know who fixes their cars and hopefully you'll find a good mechanic. They are out there but for obvious reasons are usually very busy.

Sadly the brakes had already been done two years previously but the garage was adamant they needed doing and when you are driving your children around you don’t take any risks.

I won’t use the same garage again but they did come highly recommended!

They'd be discs and pads presumably on an F2 rather than drums - so would presumably need replacing more often because they contribute to slowing the car down.

GrumpyGel said:

They'd be discs and pads presumably on an F2 rather than drums - so would presumably need replacing more often because they contribute to slowing the car down.

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Without seeing the old discs and knowing how the car is driven it's impossible to say if the garage was wrong or not.
It doesn't sound right though.