Hi, recently I was driving my 2002 Chevy Astro slowly in a parking lot when suddenly I heard a rather loud metallic scraping sound coming from somewhere under my vehicle. It sounded like something metallic was being dragged across the pavement, but when I got out and looked, I couldn’t find anything. I gave up and drove home, and the sound shortly subsided. Since then, there has been a rubbing kind of sound coming from the front passenger tire (like a rhythmic cha-cha-cha sound). The sound gets louder as I apply the brakes and slow down.
The front wheel bearings and brake pads were replaced about 1 month ago. Not sure if that’s related somehow.
If anyone has any guesses as to what this could be, I’d appreciate your insight. I don’t know how to work on cars, and have been sinking so much money into this van lately. It’s like every few months something else breaks on it.
Thank you!
Sometimes a little stone or something gets between the rotor and the sheet metal dust/water shield. It could be that. But since it’s brakes and recent work was done on them, the shop you used ought to have a look and see what’s up. Good luck and please let us know how it goes.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll take the wheel off and look for stones or anything like that. I can’t bring it back to the original shop, unfortunately, because right after he worked on it, I drove 2,600 miles across the country to a new state where I’m now living.
Sometimes when “mechanics” do a brake job they inadvertantly bent the sheet metal dust shield that @shanonia mentions. Its very common and all you need to do is bend it gently backward off of the rotor surface… it only takes a tiny amount of deflection of this metal plate to go from silent to scrapy sounding.
This is most likely the cause and solution.
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