Forester: Strange noise from front wheel

M

MH

Hi everybody

On the way to work this morning in my 2000 Forester S Turbo,
there was a moderately loud "bang" from the front left side
of the car.

Oh, I thought, just a stone hitting the inside of the wheel arch.
The road had recently been re-surfaced, there was quite a lot
of loose gravel around.

About 100 yards further on and a strange, scraping whine
starts coming from the front wheel. Sounds like the disc has
cracked or something equally nasty. I'm getting worried.

I pull over, and have a good look at the wheel. Nothing obviously
wrong, no bits fallen off, nothing loose, the disc and pads appear
to be fine (simply looking through the holes between the alloy spokes).
I decided to limp slowly on to my workplace, only half a mile further.
The car feels fine, brakes perfectly OK.

Lunchtime, & I jack up the car and remove the wheel. There's
definitely nothing wrong with the disc, pads or calipers, but you
can hear the sraping noise simply by rotating the hub by hand.

Five more minutes, and I spot the problem: A tiny stone has got
lodged between the inner face of the brake disc and the steel hub
plate. Ten seconds with a screwdriver and it is gone, problem solved.

Phew. I thought that was going to cost me big bucks.....

Cheers

MH
 
Five more minutes, and I spot the problem: A tiny stone has got
lodged between the inner face of the brake disc and the steel hub
plate. Ten seconds with a screwdriver and it is gone, problem solved.

Phew. I thought that was going to cost me big bucks.....

Did I ever tell the story about the time I came home from a trip, and that
next morning my wife got stuck in an intersection...the car wouldn't go
forward. Turns out the right-outside brake pad was gone. Gone, completely
missing. As in, caliper frame-on-rotor. WTF?

It only cost me a new rotor and a basic brake job, fortunately. That pad HAD
to make a helluva racket coming out, but apparently nobody noticed.

-John O
 
MH said:
Hi everybody

On the way to work this morning in my 2000 Forester S Turbo,
there was a moderately loud "bang" from the front left side
of the car.

Oh, I thought, just a stone hitting the inside of the wheel arch.
The road had recently been re-surfaced, there was quite a lot
of loose gravel around.

About 100 yards further on and a strange, scraping whine
starts coming from the front wheel. Sounds like the disc has
cracked or something equally nasty. I'm getting worried.

I pull over, and have a good look at the wheel. Nothing obviously
wrong, no bits fallen off, nothing loose, the disc and pads appear
to be fine (simply looking through the holes between the alloy spokes).
I decided to limp slowly on to my workplace, only half a mile further.
The car feels fine, brakes perfectly OK.

Lunchtime, & I jack up the car and remove the wheel. There's
definitely nothing wrong with the disc, pads or calipers, but you
can hear the sraping noise simply by rotating the hub by hand.

Five more minutes, and I spot the problem: A tiny stone has got
lodged between the inner face of the brake disc and the steel hub
plate. Ten seconds with a screwdriver and it is gone, problem solved.

Phew. I thought that was going to cost me big bucks.....

I had a similar incident with my daughter's Civic.
She got a flat tire, and after we got it changed
that corner of the car made a hellacious racket.
It turned out that her good-intentioned boyfriend
had somehow bent the sheetmetal guard behind the
rotor to where it was rubbing on the rotor.
 
Jim said:
I had a similar incident with my daughter's Civic.
She got a flat tire, and after we got it changed
that corner of the car made a hellacious racket.
It turned out that her good-intentioned boyfriend
had somehow bent the sheetmetal guard behind the
rotor to where it was rubbing on the rotor.

I had a very similar thing happen on my old '02 WRX, except in my case it
seemed to happen on its own while I was driving through extremely heavy
snow conditions. I think snow got packed in there and bent it up. The weird
thing in my case was it was intermittent--only when the car was away from
mechanics. How annoying!

Finally an enterprising mechanic at the dealership got the idea to take a
peek and found the plate was bent, he bent it back, no charge, all's well.
 
k. ote said:
Jim Stewart wrote:




I had a very similar thing happen on my old '02 WRX, except in my case it
seemed to happen on its own while I was driving through extremely heavy
snow conditions. I think snow got packed in there and bent it up. The weird
thing in my case was it was intermittent--only when the car was away from
mechanics. How annoying!

Finally an enterprising mechanic at the dealership got the idea to take a
peek and found the plate was bent, he bent it back, no charge, all's well.

Speaking of snow, I got in trouble in high
school for driving the Ford Falcon through
a snowbank. A big clump of snow/ice hit
the clutch release lever and popped out the
clutch linkage. My dad was not at all pleased.
 
Speaking of snow, I got in trouble in high
school for driving the Ford Falcon through
a snowbank. A big clump of snow/ice hit
the clutch release lever and popped out the
clutch linkage. My dad was not at all pleased.

Now, that was a nice car, albeit underpowered! An old boyfriend of
mine drive his family's, which had a 4-on-the-column shift, and he let
me drive it, too. Great experience. The car got bartered away for
plumbing work.
 
KLS said:
Now, that was a nice car, albeit underpowered! An old boyfriend of
mine drive his family's, which had a 4-on-the-column shift, and he let
me drive it, too. Great experience. The car got bartered away for
plumbing work.

Ours was "three-on-the-tree"

Yeah, if you want to know how a boy turns into
a man, ask his first car.

You have the same initials as my wife.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
13,889
Messages
67,365
Members
7,364
Latest member
Cimarron49

Latest Threads

Back
Top