90 gearbox vibration/clonk

well no play with my hands and body weight on the prob but the garage did find enough play to think it worth changing the UJs on the rear prop, although not an MOT fail part.

The poor thing has failed it's MOT with a fairly long list.
left front oil seal
left rear oil seal and wheel bearing - went on the drive back to the uk
little bit of welding on the lower chassis near the back
front discs and pads
couple of light bulbs

should be back in tip top condition by the end of tomorrow.

well the saga continues.. so with all the fixes on this poor thing now it is still vibrating in a bad way around the 50mph+ point. but can feel it at lower speeds just nowhere near as bad.

so far:
both props been changed or UJs fitted
new rear shocks
new rear wheel bearings and oil seals
new handbrake mech
new rear pads
new front discs and pads
new front hub oil seal
checked front wheel bearings
all diff oils changed
all gearbox and transferbox oils changed
tyres at correct pressure and checked for damage
new MOT as of tuesday

Did push the car up to 70mph on the motorway and it was better but this rumbling is too rough to feel like it should be driven at that speed for long. it feels like it is doing harm to something, so mechanical sympathy is making me drive much slower.

got a big 350 mile drive tomorrow so hope it's going to be ok. AA cover all present and correct just in case.

what could be causing this rumbling / vibrating ?

well it made the drive but wow did it vibrate around the 45-55mph point. worst at 50.

it's got worse over the corse of the day and the return journey on motorways at 60-65 seems to have taken their toll. before the drive the vibration was less and only at 50, now it spans at least 10mph of the range.

any ideas what to check? err and how to check it?

Shifty1962 said:

Should have no play at all in prop UJs and splines.

http://www.landyzone.co.uk/lz/f7/lucky-escape-265711.html

Click to expand...

i had the front fail on my 90 at 70 mph and it ripped the floor off under my feet then continued to flail around underneath me whilst i tried to get to the hard shoulder.

Proper scary!

i was having that nightmare for 14 hours of driving on sunday. was permanetly looking for places to stop or best direction to try and stear in the event of loss of control.

but just this week the garage replaced the rear UJs and the front prop is new. going to stick my head under it in a while and see if the repaired UJs are still looking good.

starting to think it must be the rear diff. hope it's the prop.

right so had a good check of all the parts i can. seems that if i rock the car using my bodyweight on the rear prop there is a slight clonk from the a frame mounts. the a frame ball joint was an advisory in the MOT but passed. could this be the source of all the trouble?
both props have zero movement even using a screwdriver to try and find lose points. front prop is all new and rear has very shiny new UJs fitted by a garage last week. they also look well greased up.

also noticed a small drip of gearbox oil from between the 2 halves of the transfer box. (easy to see as gearbox is dirty iron colour and TFbox is shiny alu colour) is it possible that the TFB is broken and causing all this vibration?

as far as i know it was replaced not long before we got the car about 4 years ago.

If the a-frame ball joint was an advisory on the mot then change it and try again.

it's a rotating speed dependant vibration though, not sure how a ball joint on the a-frame could cause that, but will get it fixed this week.

starting to hate driving this car now, every journey is another headache. the wipers packed up on me at 2am last night. had to hand dry the windscreen to drive home as couldn't find fuses in the dark.