Howdy,

So it seems whenever I take on a repair endeavor it can never go smoothly. The brakes on my 99 caravan are no exception to this rule.... le sigh.


Changed all 4 brakes on sunday. Rears were in rough shape for sure and the fronts clearly had rotor issues and upon inspection glazed pads.

long/short: swapped pads, rotors, and shoes (had drums too but they gave me the wrong size and I couldn't go swap em out. New shoes on old drums = sux).

Now when I drive I notice a distinct, rhythmic "tap" or "click" or "knock" that is coming from either one or both front brakes. Not sure what I did wrong here but I guess I'm tearing into it again this weekend. The sound goes away when I step on the brakes or when I am accelerating. Applied the parking brake and the sound continued.

Have a low pedal too but I attribute this to a leaking wheel cylinder I found (that I don't have time to replace right now, le sigh x2). At least I assume that is the cause.

Any advice is always appreciated. I know I didn't offer a lot of info here, I guess it's more of a rant than anything else.

cheers

 

Did you turn or replace the front brake rotors? If you replace them, inspect the caliper pins. If you had them resurface, replace them both.

 

Hi Master Tech,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond to my post. I replaced both front rotors.

I have a video to share too. Made this on the way home.

http://youtu.be/0vsnncahEYw
(video may take a few minutes, it's rendering)

Thanks again!

 

Okay, the noise sound like when you are driving, not when you were applying the brakes. Is that correct? If that is correct, remove the tires and inspect the inside of the wheel. You may have something just hitting the inside of the rims.

 

Thx again master tech. I'll get it up tomorrow and see what I find. I'll turn the wheels and see if I can recreate. Correct in saying it goes away for the most part when applying the brakes. Just seems interesting since it didn't exist before changing the pads/rotors.

Cheers!

 

To me, sounds like your wheel is loose. Make sure your lug nuts are tight. and the wheel isnt sitting ****. Also make sure mating surface btween wheel and rotor, rotor to Hub are clean.
or one of the Nuts and bolt isnt tight?

Regarding the low pedal, it could be due to new shoe, old Drum. you can't adjust them properly like that.
if you are replacing wheel cyln, I recommend you to put a wrench on the line nut, and Spin the wheel cyln itself with a big plier/vise grip. other wise, you have a good chance on snapping the brake line.
make sure you soak the brake line nut with WD-40 for an hour first too.

 

Thanks for the advice regarding the wheel cylinder. That is a future (Though not too far distant) project, so I was thinking I would start hitting it with rust catalyst (pb blaster) in the time leading up to the repair.

I do know that when the wheels were torqued they were set to around 90 lbs. Looking online it looks like the recommended torque is 100ft/lbs. I can't imagine a 10 ft/lb difference would/could be the cause, however I wouldn't rule that out either.


I'll put it up tomorrow and see what I can find out. Thanks again everyone for all the advice and recommendations.

Best Regards

 

Hi all,

Fixed the issue. Wheels were loose! Which Is odd because we both torqued the wheels! Only explanation I can think of is the socket was binding in the rim (after market rims) causing the torque wrench to click. Or maybe the lugs loosened up after driving some. Anyway, it seems to be fixed now and thankfully no wheels went flying off on the freeway (bad time).

Thanks again for all the help and suggestions. Luckily it appears this was an easy fix today.

Cheers!