Front end repair question

[Dan Verton]

Hey folks,

I’m a new member to the board and a novice at auto repair – doing this out of financial necessity.

I recently started hearing a hollow scraping noise near my front drivers side tire on my 2006 KIA Sedona minivan. It happened when I turned the wheel to the right and seemed to coincide with the tire’s rotation. “scrape – scrape – scrape” etc…. On straight aways it happens mostly at speed (60 Mph)

Today I jacked up the front and found a sway bar link broken. So I removed it and will put a new one on. But it hasn’t stopped the noise.

Any idea what else I might be dealing with here and what else I should inspect?

Many thanks for your help.

Topic

[Andrew Phillips]

Check the dust shield behind the rotor, it may be bent.

[Dan Verton]

Thanks! Appreciate the help.

[zero]

While your looking at the dust shield, check the breaks. It sounds like a rotational noise from your description.

[Mark Babunovic]

I had virtually the same symptoms — like something scraping on sheetmetal at tire-rotating frequency — on the front wheel of my 2002 Accord. I would start to hear it after the car was driven a while in stop and go traffic, and then especially when turning. Rather than a deformed backplate, it turned out to be the lip of rust that had built up around the inner edge of the rotor scraping against the backplate. I decided to remove the rust since there was nothing wrong with the rotor. With the caliper removed ( I don’t think I even needed to remove the caliper bracket), I reached around the back of the rotor with a flat file to scrape/file away the rust along the section of the inner edge that was accessible, turning the rotor bit by bit until I’d cleared the rust off all around. Problem solved.

The same thing happened to my rear brake drums a while ago, although it showed up as sort of a crunching sound when in reverse. It was pretty obvious what made the noise from rotating the drum with the wheel off. A similar fix – removed the drums and took a grinder to the rust along the edge that was rubbing against the backplate.

[Author]

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