I recently had my 09MY PolyBushed to try to stop the 'wallowy' handling (see feature, LRO Nov 2014). It really sharpened it up, and I was very pleased.

But 2700 miles later it started (over the course of a week) to get odd steering. Particularly when accelerating, any unevenness in the road surface (and even a line of slushy snow!) makes the steering wheel twitch in my hands, and the car wanders. At a steady cruising speed on a smooth trunk road or motorway it’s perfectly stable, but divert off onto a minor road and it’s quite a handful.

In addition, there can be alarming ‘torque steer’ — accelerate hard to overtake a truck and it will veer to the right… lift off once past and it snaps back in to the left. Obviously there was an immediate tendency to blame the PolyBushes, but I’m going to discount that because of the distance I did before the trouble started. They’ve also been inspected, and appear fine.

I went back to the non-franchised LR specialist workshop that fitted the bushes, and they checked everything over, and found no fault. They swapped the wheels front to rear, and sent it for a full alignment check. No appreciable difference.

The next thing was to replace the rear track arms — it’s not easy/possible to PolyBush these, so the original LR ones had been left in. When the originals were removed they showed little sign of wear, but were replaced anyway, and the alignment re-checked. Again, no startling difference.

A phone call to LR Technical immediately identified the problem… or so we thought. The Freelander 2 specialist straightway recognised the trouble as probably a worn nearside rear damper. No point in replacing one, so I ordered a pair to be fitted. The workshop reported that the nearside one was definitely weaker than the right, replaced them, and reported an improvement when driven on a local A road.

I picked it up this morning, and came home via a rural route through the moors. On the journey to the workshop in their loan car (a well-used Freelander 1) the car was rattly, but solid on the road (even in the ice of a Yorkshire morning). The return journey in the F2 was terrifying… no precision at all, with the steering wheel twitching, and a very upsetting moment when I overtook someone, and nearly wiped them off the road as the car veered from side to side. Clearly it is NOT fixed, but we are at a loss what to try next.

If this were a Series LR I would immediately suspect one of the many track rod ends in the system, but the F2 is very simple, with the rack ends going direct to the steering arms. Also there are no bonks and clonks, either heard or felt in the steering, to suggest that something metal is failing. With over £1000 spent on this, I’m very loath now to try front dampers or a new rack.

In the absence of anything mechanical to check, I wonder about the electronics. Am I right in thinking that there are degrees of manipulation of the steering dependent on road speed and load? Other topics on this forum seem to suggest that there might be. I believe that the workshop has checked the fault codes, but this is something completely new to me after over half-a-century of driving.

If you're confident the suspension/geometry is sound, I'd suspect the power steering pump is the culprit Td4 XS manual, Orkney Grey, MY2014

Well, I did wonder about that, but I can't work out what could be doing to give that effect. The workshop didn't suspect anything, and it's an expensive piece of kit to replace 'just in case'.

Can you explain your thoughts? I'm very happy to be convinced.

Pumps & racks fail inernally with filter problems but i thet could also be steering angle sensor/ yaw sensor - all manner of gadgetry can be affected by a faulty sensor including the terrain response/haldex system and variable rate steering system.

I'd get the system read by a specialist with the right diagnostics to read some live data Td4 XS manual, Orkney Grey, MY2014

The FL2 steering system is a pure mechanical system. Hydraulic assisted but pure mechanical.
No gadgetry, no sensors to modify steering, no error codes, no nothing.
At speed the steering pump can even be eliminated from discussion. You don't need assistance at speed.
So search the problem in your modified steering system - arms, bushes, etc - and how these affect the steering.
Also check the geometry. I know... AGAIN.
If nothing helps, try to increase, just a tiny bit, the front toe-in angle. More toe-in.

But the steering angle sensor links into the stability control and terrain response affecting the control of the vehicle. The mechanicals are very much influenced by the electricals through the various sensors. There are several processors between your hands on the wheel and what happens at the tyres Td4 XS manual, Orkney Grey, MY2014

Indeed, true what you said, but the steering mechanics are influenced only when ABS is used for stability control and it's braking the (front) wheels.
For sure this is not the case.
Again, a pure mechanical system, not like on the case of electrical assisted steering when the steering motor could take control. What you feel on the steering wheel are the road wheels and vice-versa.

have you tried driving onto soft wet ground and flooring the throttle & seeing if 1 wheel is spinning up ! if it is then you could have a haldex issue.
Wouldnt be the first FR2 to see all the tourque going through 1 wheel !
Has anyone tried recalibrating the SAS ? Jaguar x-type sport gone
Jaguar x-type 2.2d sport one of my best cars ever sadly gone
Freelander 2 GS auto 2008 most unreliable ever ! gladly gone
Freelander 2 GS manual 2013 only time will tell !

As a motor mechanic I picked up a car once to service it. Driving it back to the workshop it displayed the same symptoms as yours and was all over the road so I checked the whole steering and suspension and found nothing wrong. A few years ago I had the same symptoms on a brand new Fiesta that I had bought for my wife. In both cases, the tyres had been grossly over inflated (so much for main dealer new vehicle PDI). On the customers car he told be that he had pumped them up at the petrol station in the rain, didn't check the gauge so he ended up with over 70psi in a couple of them and over 50psi in the other two - it was a wonder they didn't explode. Just a thought but have you checked the tyre pressures? Silly I know, and probably not the answer to your problem but sometimes the obvious is overlooked.

Had a Mitsubishi company car, over a week is got increasingly strange steering. In the end I found one of the rear tires was a bit flat caused by a slow leak from a screw. It never looked flat but I was surprised how much this was affecting the steering. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

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Steve D wrote:

Just a thought but have you checked the tyre pressures?

oldgeezer wrote:

have you tried driving onto soft wet ground and flooring the throttle & seeing if 1 wheel is spinning up !

Steve D wrote:

As a motor mechanic I picked up a car once to service it. Driving it back to the workshop it displayed the same symptoms as yours and was all over the road so I checked the whole steering and suspension and found nothing wrong. A few years ago I had the same symptoms on a brand new Fiesta that I had bought for my wife. In both cases, the tyres had been grossly over inflated (so much for main dealer new vehicle PDI). On the customers car he told be that he had pumped them up at the petrol station in the rain, didn't check the gauge so he ended up with over 70psi in a couple of them and over 50psi in the other two - it was a wonder they didn't explode. Just a thought but have you checked the tyre pressures? Silly I know, and probably not the answer to your problem but sometimes the obvious is overlooked.

I picked up my i20 after a dealer service plus new rims fitted all round because of scabin and had to stop on the way home as I thought I was going to crash! 3 tires were flat with about 12 psi  Freelander 57 plate XS Blue Auto

Teeafit wrote:

Steve D wrote:

Just a thought but have you checked the tyre pressures?

Yup... 3 times!

oldgeezer wrote:

have you tried driving onto soft wet ground and flooring the throttle & seeing if 1 wheel is spinning up !

Soft wet ground? At the moment we have plenty of that here, covered with 6 inches of rotten slushy snow! I'll give it a try — my gut feeling is that there's something going on here that's nothing to do with the original PolyBush issue, which is a red herring.

Yes, as of last Friday I think that we have found the problem — but I'm afraid it's not likely to be of help to you. I can't say too much because I'm still in (heated) discussion with a company, but a very expensive 'wobble plate' test (where the car's suspension can be operated whilst the vehicle is stationary) showed that the bush replacement may not have been as successful as one would have the right to expect.

If you can get your Lower Front Suspension Arm bushes checked, have a particular look at the smaller front ones. They were the culprits here... but I'm not going to categorically state that that's the problem with your car because mine was a rather specialist case.

Just to wrap this up, the design engineer of the company concerned came to investigate the after-market bushes, and has gone away to redesign them. The car is being returned to original LR spec!

I can say no more at this juncture... but am really looking forward to getting the car back tomorrow after a month with a loan car — a Renault Clio!