need some help/knowledge/guidance here...

'98 ram 1500 5.2, 205k miles

there's been a rattle coming from the drivers side front for awhile. goes away immediately if i apply even minimal/light pressure to the brakes....not even enough to affect the speed of the truck....just enough for the brake light to come on and the calibers to squeeze a bit. so i don't think its anything suspension related....thought process being that if it was, then such minimal brake pressure wouldn't have any effect on the rattling. also had both front end u-joints replaced in ~february, but that had no effect on the noise.

almost sounds like the rotor's rattling around between the calibers, though i'm not even sure that's possible. when i listen to the rhythm of it, that's just what comes to mind immediately.

installed new brake pads myself and had the rotors machined last week. guy said he'd put them at minimum....so they've certainly been on there awhile. didn't notice anything unusual when it was all disassembled, though i didn't actively check for a solution to that problem....because it wasn't much of an issue at the time and i sort of figure any truck with 200k+ won't whisper like a prius driving around town. furthermore, iirc, it only used to rattle when driving down a dirt road/washboard.

post brake change the rattle has definitely gotten worse. does it basically all the time, regardless of surface, at anything over ~15mph. loud to the point where people are turning around with 'wtf' faces when i drive down the street.

probably gonna jack it up tomorrow (sunday) and poke around. any suggestions as to what to look for? i've done some suspension work on my car, know how to change brakes, but i'm no mechanic.

thanks for any help!

 

the only thing i can think of is maybe your caliper bracket isn't tight. its the metal piece you have to take off to get the rotor off and its held on with 2 21mm bolts. those bolts are supposed to be 130 ft-lbs.

does that noise return the moment you take your foot off the brake?
other possibilities are loose track bar, loose shock bolts, loose hub nuts, loose hub bolts, loose lug nuts, u joints missing the c-clips or loose/bad ball joints.

 

its one of those (when it happened to me it was top shock bolt)

 

the noise does return immediately if i take my foot off the brake. i didn't have a torque wrench for the caliber bolts...but i got them pretty darn tight.

 

the caliper bolts are supposed to be 38 ft-lbs. which is just past snug. those are the slide pins that hold the caliper on. the ones that are supposed to be really tight are the bigger ones that hold the caliper bracket to the knuckle.