Yahoo Answers is shutting down on 4 May 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
Noise from rear wheel after changing brake discs and pads?
I thought I'd cracked the mystery when I realized I'd put the wheel nuts back on back-to-front (my first time replacing brake pads on a car) but the noise is still there and worse than it was before.
It's a low-pitched kind of grinding noise that only happens when I make a right turn. It's hard to tell for certain but it seems to be coming from the nearside (left-hand side) rear wheel. The brakes work fine and there's not really any obvious visible signs of anything wrong.
I should note that I didn't put anti-rattle shims in (the old ones were unusable and there weren't any included with the new pads) but the grinding noise sounds too loud to be a simple rattle, and it only happens on right turns. The harder the turn the more pronounced the grinding noise.
Can anyone tell me what the fault is? Tomorrow I'll try putting on a spare wheel to see if that makes the noise go away, then I'll be able to tell if the fault is in the wheel or if it's something else.
Thanks Mick. :-)
I removed the old discs by bashing them with a rubber mallet, I was fairly careful. The wheel nuts I tightened very well; the nuts are a little bit damaged and the studs aren't perfect either, but the wheel seems to be perfectly tight. A damaged bearing does sound to me like a likely explanation, I'll investigate tomorrow morning.
2 Answers
- ?Lv 78 years agoFavourite answer
Unless you've failed miserably to tighten the wheel nuts [properly], I would be tempted to suggest that it's the rear wheel bearing (probably a complete hub unit) that's gone. It could be purely coincidental or it could have been as a result of shock loadings from trying to remove the old disc with the biggest hammer you could find.
You're more than likely right about it being the nearside wheel because it suffers more loading the 'more' right turn you go. Going straight and left won't be stressing the bearing/hub quite the same.
Edit @ Ninja - lift the wheel from the floor [securely, of course] and leave the wheel on. Hold the wheel top and bottom and 'rock' it in and out. Any perceivable rotation in the hub is unacceptable. I've replaced one of the hubs on my car after doing the brakes but my car's a drum handbrake inside a disc and it took a whole lot of 'effort' to get the disc/drum unit off. The hub was junk afterwards but was 150,000 miles old...and was about £100 to replace.
