Solo Man
Well-known member
When i got the car last year (previous owner was my son) it had what felt like jerks when accelerating more than mildly. I ascribed it to the way my son was driving the car as well as the fact that with Covid he did not do much travelling with the car as he lives quite close to the school his kids go to and his work is also close by. Meaning that the car nearly never got driven on the highway for very far and was sort of getting carboned up. I thought that with me driving it mostly on the open road and at 100 and 120 most of the way it would get rid of the carbon. I also have a rule that once in a while i would drive it "harder" for a short distance to get rid of the carbon. That did not really help as the car still had this slight jerk when under load. I eventually disconnected the transfer case and that helped a lot with almost eliminating the jerking. Also me driving more open road also helped as eventually the car stopped jerking and is now driving normally. I also was experiencing bad clutch shudders when pulling away against an incline and especially when the engine was still cold. When hot there was a very slight shudder but not really noticeable to the passengers. Long story short, i know that at 165k the clutch/flywheel combo was probably on its last legs but knowing that my son was not a racer and also the clutch was relatively quiet when depressed, and also i did not want to spend R15k on a new clutch/dual mass flywheel, i started replacing engine mountings as well as the gearbox mounting. That helped but not as much as i had hoped. Recently when i was under the car a noticed that the rubber guibo or doughnut as some people call it, was still fine but the sleeves of the six bolts connecting it to the propshaft was loose! I could move the doughnut along the sleeves meaning that the rubber had come loose from the steel sleeves meaning i had to replace the doughnut, which i promptly did. Today i got under the car again and reconnected the transfer case and went for a spin on the highway and can now report that the jerking is still gone. To just mention the guibo again, the loose steel sleeves had quite a lot of play and i am wondering if that did not cause the front and rear axles to not work together (like when you fit different circumference tires to the car)?? Anyway, will report back again later regarding the jerking and if it is gone permanently. My reason for writing this is that if you experience problems with the X3 transfer case, just check your guibo as that could be the cause of the problem.
