My brakes make wierd noises as I am driving. When I go slow its a WOOOOO WOOOOOO sound and it stops when I hit the brake pedal. When I am going faster it still makes a noise and I can feel the vibration in the car, it stops when I tap on the brake. I regreased the caliper pins and it did not help. It is random, it will do it some days and some days it wont. The noise can stop if I hit a bump or even gets louder as I make a slight turn on the highway. I have no idea what it is but it is very annoying.

 

You warp you rotors by driving down when it's hot and then hit a nice cool puddle? That situation got me once or twice...of course I just drove on them anyway....

 

Rotor is not warped, it only does this at random times. Like it did it this morning ONLY when making a 5mph turn over a bump and then it stopped again.

 

It's not a ****ing warped rotor. I have the same symptoms. It got so annoying I didn't want to drive the car. I didn't have time to change them until today. It feels so much better now man. I got both front calipers for $80 from Advanced Auto Parts. (took less than 30 minutes to replace them with a friend to help bleed)

Check the seal/gasket around the piston to check for deteoriation.

 

Well the calipers are pretty new, I changed them before the summer. So I hope its not it. I hope they have a warranty. I think it is only from the right side. I don't understand why it is completly random. It really pisses me off.

 

Have you replaced your wheel bearings? that would be my next guess.

 

Why would they change with braking? I know it has something to do with the caliper. Can I "free" the pistons?

 

I had the same problem as you kelvo except with stock 4th gen calipers, it would make noise or shake randoming and finally just seized completely. That caliper was only a year old too, so it is possible that even though its a newer caliper it could fail.

 

Ya I emailed the people that I got the caliper from. I should be under warranty so I should get a new one soon hopefully.

 

I have a very similar problem with my z32 tt calipers. It makes a slight, random, rubbing noise at slow speeds, usually while turning.

 

me too. And it still does it, even with differnt rebuilt z32 calipers. It also kept doing it with the 2-pc rotors on. It seems to only do it when the brakes are really hot (on cold days, it never does it).

I have played with using washers to space out the calipers/brackets to center them better on the rotor. Hard to tell if it worked or not, since it's cold now and I've only heard the sounds once or twice.

Odd part now is that it is doing it on left turns and not on right turns now.

I think it might have a slight rubbing of the rotor on the inside of the caliper whe it's heated up and turning...but who knows at this point.

it might just be some funky harmonic thing that I have no idea how to fix.

 

I am going to reinstall the brakes next week so maybe that will fix it. Mine not only does it at low speed randomly, it does it at high speeds.

 

are all of you guys with the problem using Matt's brackets, or are some of you using Jeff's cobra setup? Could help us narrow down the problem....

 

I am using Matt's brackets. I wonder if my washers are spacing the caliper over the rotor properly

 

Anyone else have the problem?

 

I'm using Jeff's brackets....

 

Check to see if anything is rubbing the outside edge of the rotor.

 

anyone ever solve this problem?

I haven't heard the noise all winter, but then again it's been under 50 degrees all winter. I'm wondering if it will come back when it gets hot again <sigh>

I think I might try an angled shim on the pad - I know the 300zx guys used them for a while and maybe that' why

 

Take the whistler tip off your car.

....sorry

 

'


Mine has calmed down for a while but it is comming back Ima try to respace the caliper with smaller washers during my spring break.

 

i've had this problem on and off for years. It happens on my Max and my 240. Happens no matter what brakes I've got installed. I even rebuilt the entire suspension at once before.. new spindles, bearings, springs, struts, 100% stock brakes and everything. STILL there.

Then I thought it was in my tranny, since it started as soon as I had it rebuilt (I had my early design skyline/wilwood brake kit on the car at the time)... I replaced the tranny and axles. no dice.
changed ride height on the car a dozen times or so, even going back to stock springs and shocks, wondering if it was an axle bottoming out.. still no dice.

Keep in mind, I've only had one of my brake kits on the car for a very short while a couple years ago. the rest of the time, I've been using either Skyline or Coleman rotors with Wilwood dynalite or superlite calipers.. It's done it with all of these brake setups, and I can't find any visual wear on the caliper anywhere to indicate rubbing against the rotor.

I've resigned to just deal with it. I've literally replaced EVERYTHING on this car at least 3 times, and the noise still comes back.

..... I've replaced everything on my 240 at least once now, working on my 2nd round of wheel bearings and such.... still there.

 

update:
I reassembled the 2pc 6th gen rotors and had them cut so they're nice and fresh.

As I posted above, I haven't had the noise all winter with the normal 6G rotors.

After installing the 2pc rotors today and driving hard for about 10 minutes, the noise came back almost immediately. Logic = noise is directly related to the brake setup, and not anything else on the car...since all I did was change the rotors.

I then shimmed one of the calipers with washers. Noise still there.

Then shimmed the other caliper with washers. So far, no noise after about 20mins of hard driving and braking.

I *think* the thing to do is to shim the calipers outward the width of one washer (between the caliper and the bracket). It will LOOK like the caliper is off-center to the rotor, but it seems to do the trick....

keeping my fingers crossed. If it comes back, next step will be to take the dremel to the inside "channel" of the caliper and make a little bit more room in there

 

Before you do that, pull the caliper off the car and look to see if there's any contact marks on it.

that's also easy enough to check by simply scribbling on the inside of the caliper with white out, sharpie, paint pen, whatever contrasts your calipers.
See if and where things are rubbing before you just randomly take a grinder to the caliper and hope it solves the problem.

 

yep...already done. It made the noise lightly once today. I almost think it is not contacting hard...just brushing some surface enough to create some kind of odd resonance. I'm going to give it a week or two and see if it goes away once the new rotors are "broken in."

other possibility: I wonder if this has anything to do with aluminum calipers vs. iron calipers. Has anyone with the IRON z32 calipers had this problem....

 

read my first post. it has nothing to do with which caliper it is. I've had this happen on a 100% stock 3rd gen setup. I've had it happen on a 100% stock 240SX setup. I've had it happen on 4 different wilwood/OEM and custom rotor setups both 2 cars. I've seen it come and go.

And never once have I seen any visible rubbing or contact with the caliper. that's what freaks me out. where the noise is coming from, I simply don't know.

 

Matt, I almost think that whatever problem you're having is different from what others are having - since I did not had this problem AT ALL using the full 6th gen or my stock setup (EVER) - it's directly related to the z32 calipers in some way - and I have used 2 different sets, so it is not a "bad" caliper either.

After much thought today I have narrowed it down to what I think are the three possibilities:

It ONLY happens when the brakes are hot, after alot of braking or stop and go traffic, keep in mind. NEVER when the brakes are cool, and never within the first 15 minutes or so of driving.

1. Master cylinder - perhaps when the brake fluid heats up (and expands), the master cylinder is not "strong enough" (for lack of better word) to retract the pistons enough. After all, the piston area is quite a bit more than the stock calipers. I don't know the solution for this other than a larger MC though...

2. Pads....Are all of us with the z32 setup running Hawk HPS pads...or other? I might try the old OEM 300zx pads I have sitting around just to see if the sound is still there with them.

3. I am also going to try the "angled" shims used in 1992-3 by Nissan on the Z. You can't buy them anymore, so I'm taking a stock set of shims and cutting them. Perhaps Nissan knew something that we don't......because they didn't have those shims on the 1991 calipers, only in 1992+....

I also have not seen any visibe rubbing anywhere, and am convinced it is the pad dragging and creating a slight resonance. Now to figure out why the pad is dragging...M/C, angle of the caliper, thickness of the rotor

 

I also have to wonder why Nissan did away with the Aluminum calipers on the z32 and changed to iron on all the models (including the TT) in later years of that chassis.

Perhaps when heated too much, there is different expansion of materials between the aluminum calipers and the steel pistons/piston sleeves, causing the pistons not to retract completely when you let off?? Just a thought...shot in the dark, since I doubt that's the problem.

 

Although I don't have the problem (nor the calipers), that sounds about right from how you guys have described it.

 

Does the problem go away as pads get older? My pads are still pretty new.

 

My pads have been on the car for about 6 months. The sound actually went away for most of the winter, but like I said, came back immediately (and daily) since I have put the 2pc rotors back on.

I just got the new shims in from DaveB, and I am cutting them to the angle-cut used on the 2/91+ TTZ. Maybe install this weekend (it's snowing out now), and we'll see if that does anything.

here's a pic of the shims, cut to the same angle as the z32 shims for 2/91 and after (which Nissan no longer sells)

 

update:

angled shims didn't fix the problem

did a couple other minor tweaks....still get the noise after hard driving. Cleaned, relubricated, and checked every part of the front brake assemblies today. everything looked fine, but there is a light streak on the outside 1cm. of the driver's side rotors (where I hear the sound from)...Looks like the pad is just barely dragging.

Makes me think that maybe the caliper is not perfectly vertical as opposed to the rotor.

next step is to use Mr. Dremel to put a very slight angle on my washer shims and see if I can "level" the caliper. Time to pull out the old engineering tools and do some precise measuring.

next step is to slap on some cheapo pads and see what happens. Then I can rule out the Hawk pads as a cause of the noise....

 

This might be a dumb idea but ill say it anyways. How about putting a think magnet on the back of the pads so it always sticks to the pistons. So everytime we let off the brake, the pad is always being pulled as far back as possible.

 

problem solved:

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....63#post5578463

 

I can't do this, my washer is on the bolt side, it does NOT space the capliper from the bracket so I cannot shim the washer to move the caliper any. I took pics, I will post them soon.

 

Bump cuz I edited my post and I will post pics in this one.

 

This is my brackets. Did I put the washers like I was suppose to?




As you can see the caliper isn't exactly strait with the rotor like Irish was saying, it is BARELY off.

 

Kev, where did you get the calipers from if you don't mind my asking? New, reman.?

 

rockauto.com I never went through with getting new calipers tho.

 

just an update...the sounds suddenly came back after a long road trip...and with a vengeance!!!!

I am now trying my last-ditch effort: installing the IRON calipers next weekend. After extensive consultations with my father (who worked on cars for abotu 40years and has several engineering degrees), he is pretty sure that there is an issue with the alumiunum calipers deforming themselves, affecting the piston travel and/or the levelness of teh pads on the rotors.

Stories I have heard about visually being able to see the calipers flexing under brake load supports the theory.

Update when I have the irons on .....

 

so far i have 100 miles on mine. i know its way too early to conclude anything but so far i dont have this woo woo problem. just a suggestion, have you guys thought about using jeff's brackets instead of matts? because with matts bracket, the caliper doesnt sit where the stock caliper was. and the design is very different. i would try that too as a last resort

edit: just noticed in kevlo'ss pictures that the SS line is twisted all the way into the caliper where as mine could prolly be twisted another 2mm in (i was scared of stripping it). prolly that would bring out the full potential of the calipers, no?

whats the benefit of cut shims? i didnt cut mine.