Tracing down strange noises....

[NEK5]

It always seems like your tracing down strange noise.

02 Ford Taurus.

Me and my buddy did the rear drum brakes on it. New drums and shoes. Got them adjusted so there was a little drag on the drums.

A day later, his wifey started complaining about a noise, so today I came over to help him with the fronts, and check out the rear. We pulled the drums off on both sides, and everything seems to be where it is, comparing it to a Haynes manual.

So we took it for a ride, and it seems like when you press on the brakes, it makes like a tapping noise, and it intenses as you press the pedal down more. It will even do it from 10MPH and down, not just higher speeds.

I started looking around underneath to see if any lines or anything of the like was loose and may have caused the tapping, but nothing.

Any ideas fellas?

TIA!

 

[buffblazer]

oh dude that is an easy one, its a ford get rid of it and buy a chevy, problem fixed

but really what you need to do is narrow it down to what side its coming from. have someone get in and drive, while the other walks along outside and listen for a particular area on the vehicle. then go from there.

 

[NEK5]

Unfortunately, we tried that, unsuccesfully. While driving, you can hear the noise even when you get down to 3-5MPH. So like anyone else would try, I standed on the side of the road and had him drive by and stop next to me. Nothing, on either side.

So I did some research, and it turns out that if drums are machined to fast, it will cause the shoes to move when braking. What it does it shift over to the outside of the drum, then the spring will pull it back inside and hit the backing plate, which causes the tapping noise.

So what we did, as per the advice from a google search, was take the drums off, sand them with 100g sand paper, non-directionally, and then switched sides (put drivers side on passenger side, vice versa)

VOILA! Problem solved!

 

[buffblazer]

sweet gotta love google, glad you figured out your problem