Re: [DML] "Chirping" sound

["Walter Coe" <Whalt@xxxx>]

> I've had an annoying "chirping" sound coming from (I think) one of my
wheels for awhile now, one of the rear ones I believe. It only develops
after driving for awhile but it goes away when I break. Any idea on what
this could be? A bearing? Something wrong with my breaks?

Richard,

I had a similar rattling noise coming from my rear brakes that was a
challenge for me to diagnose. Since then I rebuilt my brakes and learned a
lot in the process. Here's what was happening: The rear brake rotors were
slightly warped (which I understand now is kind of normal and something to
just put up with) and as a high spot would rotate past the brake pad it
would tend to grab it, pick it up, and then drop it in a repeated cycle as
the wheel would turn. A slight pressure on the brake pedal would interrupt
this. The fix (which I learned from Rob Grady) is to add some springs (one
for each pad for a total of four springs for the rear brakes). The spring
is kind of hard to describe -- they start with a straight piece of spring
wire, bend a hook shape in the middle that holds onto the brake pad with the
two ends of the wire bending outwards and holding onto the two pins that
hold the pads in place. This provides enough friction/stability to stop
slight warps in the rotor from rattling the pads. They call these
"anti-rattle" springs.

In your case with hearing squeaks instead of rattles, maybe your problem is
similar but manifesting itself as a squeak. As a diagnostic, try driving
while applying the hand brake. If you still hear the noise, then you can
eliminate the parking brake pads as the source of the noise. How I
diagnosed mine was I put the car on jack stands, took the wheels off, spun
the rotors by hand until I could see what was going on.

Well, I went off on a tangent. If it's none of the above, then maybe you
have a bad wheel bearing.

Walt Tampa, FL