My brakes are making noise on my 2009 GE8 Base. I've got OE Honda Rotors and Hawk HPS pads.

When I put a little pressure on the brakes, the noise gets worse, but a little bit more it goes away completely. When I jiggle the wheel right to left, the noise switches to the direction I'm going towards. No noise when cold, gets progressively worse as everything reaches operating temperature. Speed doesn't matter, low or high it's just as bad, high speed maybe has a higher volume. It was happening before my trip to California (about 6k miles) I figured it'd go away on the trip but it didn't.

Pads are still at well over 50% life, the rotors are decent looking with no pits or gouges, and the calipers are retracting like they should. There are no rocks or anything caught anywhere. The car has 36xxx miles on it.

I've cleaned everything with brake cleaner, chamfered the edges of the pads a little bit, scuffed the rotors with a stainless steel wire brush a bit, and regreased everything with the appropriate greases.

It's rather annoying for me and everyone around me, but the plus side is that deer run away from my car as quickly as they possibly can. lol.

 

No brake drag? You might consider front wheel bearings, given the fact that it seems to be steering related.

 

I already checked the wheel bearings. They don't move in directions they shouldn't, and runout is good.

 

Wheel bearings should spin - you really shouldn't be able to feel any lateral free-play. The noise sounds like?? Grinding, scrapping, howling... guessing something is rubbing.

Beyond that and you're getting into the driveshaft.

 

it's not the wheel bearings or anything else.

When I had the brakes off, I spun everything just to listen and there was no noise at all.

 

Yeah, but, there was no weight on the bearings.

 

I checked runout as well, and everything was well within the specs. You're really going to tell me that a car with 36k on it needs new bearings?

The noise sounds like race pads.

 

I don't think your car needs front wheel bearings either, just that your test was inconclusive.



You must have installed the Hawk pads 'way before the OE brake pads were worn out. Maybe pop the factory ones back in for a while and see if the noise goes away? What line of pads are the Hawks?

Is there a ridge of rust on the rotors from road salt? That could cause a grinding noise such as you are experiencing.

 

I'm going to swap the OE pads back in tomorrow afternoon. I guess there's a little ridge on the outer and inner edge -- I've never lived in a place where they use *THIS* much road salt before, so I have no idea if it's normal.

 

Wheel bearings on hondas tend to be deceptive - I had both the fronts go out on my civic at the same time, at about 150k iirc, and it made lots of bad noises but runout was good! It was weird. Not only that but because everything telescoped in that car I didn't know both were making noise. With the tires off the ground, it was dead silent and felt fine because they were unloaded.

Wheel bearings with low mileage on a honda are not unheard of. Rare, but not unheard of. The second gen CRV I used to drive had its rears go out at 45k miles for example.

 

Damn. Right after the warranty expired.

 

By design.


I have replaced one wheel bearing in our 160K mile-Acura, at 120K miles.

A car my daughter owned (Izuzu-made Geo) spun it's rear wheel bearings every 40K.

A 1970's Audi I owned, ruined it's rear wheel bearings every 25K

All the symptoms were different than yours.

 

I know it's not bearings, my OE pads made the noise go away. I'm not going to bother with the pads or rotors. When this set of pads wears down, I'll replace them with some new OE rotors, and some new HPS pads then I'll wait another 20k before the noise starts.

If it's any constellation, a friend of mine said "Yeah, every single car I have put HPS pads on does that after about 7k. I wondered why yours was taking so long to start making noise."

 

Check out the links in this thread. Maybe related.

Brake bed-in procedure info

 

Here's another take in it: StopTech : Balanced Brake Upgrades

 

lol, funny you should mention that website. they were a sponsor of my 24 hours of lemons car.

 

You guys can stop posting. I've decided I don't care anymore. I drove on them for almost 30k miles before they started making noise, and I'm probably going to need to replace rotors and pads after this winter.