Advice needed. Getting paranoid about big bills again, diagnosis important to stop the car from being passed to gf for her shorter daily commute!
Ok heres the situation, a month or so ago I noticed the occassional squeak noise from the wheels… Now its quite a noticable rapid ‘on/off’-‘on/off’ high pitch squeak which sounds to my ears like a wheel bearing noise.
Heres the thing I’m not sure about… its really bad when I turn left, very minimal if at all when going straight, and not there at all when turning right… It also disappears entirely when I brake… To my mind this is going to be the rear left wheel bearing, due to load on it stopping the noise when going right?
Worried that it could be brakes scraping?
Other info that might be relevant:- 2 weeks ago MOT said brake pads are 70% worn, Amber advisory
Stupidly I ran the car on a very flat rear left tyre for a month before noticing, so vibrated back left.
It’s put your overalls on time, and remove all the wheels one at a time to check everything. Something may have come loose or broken. I had a similar problem on a brand new Honda Civic and I found out that it was a piece of wire that had somehow got lodged into the caliper and associated pipes. The strange thing in my case was it didn’t happen when reversing, only happened when driving forward at a certain speed.
Ok so this problem actually seems to be on the front right wheel.
I’ve had the car up in the air, absolutely no play in the wheel on the 12-6 / 9-3 wobble test its solid as a rock… This combined with the noise now sounding very scratch like is making me rule out the wheel bearing. The noise does come from the caliper region when free spinning the wheel. The noise can also entirely disappear sometimes after certain braking until I next brake.
Unfortunately I couldnt get the damn wheel off as the garage that fitted new tires have tightened the nut beyond undoability with the small factory nut wrench (even kicking the thing!), however the outer pad can be seen to have a fair bit of material left on it.
Do you guys know if the inner (engine side of caliper) pad wears faster than the outer pad? I could well be on minimal if thats the case. My discs are pretty rusted up on the edges but have no cracks and appear ok.
There is a possibility the brake fluid hasnt been changed since 2007, could this have gone watery over time and be causing a problem? Problem such as caliper piston seal? Is this capable of causing the above scratching?
If the caliper sliders are seized then the inner pad will do most of the braking and wear out faster. The inner pad is also the pad with the squealer clip attached.
All of the rubber seals in the caliper and sliders will swell or perish eventually, resulting in either a partially seized caliper or a fluid leak.