I drive a fair amount on dirt roads. Yesterday, I was scared shitless. As I was driving down the road, this WRETCHED metal on metal noise started howling from my front passenger side wheel.
I thought for sure something was catastrophically wrong and either my wheel was going to fall off or the brakes were seriously f’ed up. I stopped in a hurry and jack up the wheel. Hmm, no play in the wheel, brakes look normal and everything is nice, tight and secure. So I pull off the wheel to look around a bit more.
Somehow, a tiny pebble had lodged itself firmly between the dust shield and the rotor. The wretched noise was the pebble’s friction on the rotor.
The odds of that happening are about 813672634724623753667 to 1 the way I see it. The pebble had to find its way up into the middle of the wheel and be of just the exact size to wedge itself into the space between the shield and the rotor, but not be too loose so that it would fall out.
Has anyone else had something so random and rare happen like that with their car while driving?
not between the shield and rotor, but between the brake pad and the rotor. I chalked it up to a botched install when I had put pads in the week prior, but I was careful as always doing it… like you said, its possible you can just kick one up and catch it (random as that is)… gouged it pretty good if i remember correctly i was like how the hell did that happen?!
between rotor and shield has happend to me…multiple times. Not to the extent i feel i need to stop. I gets caught…and falls out after a short period of time. If not, reverse takes care of it.
the heat shield is usually just a thin piece of stamped steel that has a lot of flex to it… “just the exact size” pebble is actually a pretty broad range. It’s even likely that the pebble was so large that it flexed the heat shield into the rotor causing actual contact.
It happened to me on the back roads of Pennsultucky when I was messing around on the way to an STPR stage. It is LOUD when it gets stuck because the heatshield is like acts like a loudspeaker. I thought I screwed up my car by sliding in the gravel. lol
Yep. Picked up a pebble between the caliper bracket and rotor. Didn’t make any noise…I just began noticing a line being etched in the disc. Popped off the wheel and found it.
This happened to me last summer on my bike, I was in sherkston and SOMEHOW a small amount of sand got stuck in between my pad and rotor in the front and it screeched like a dying pig until I took it apart
i was like how the hell did that happen?!