So Saturday I took the car up to the mountains (what counts as a mountain in NC) to do a little spirited driving. There is a great road that winds hard up the mountain that you can have have a lot of fun on.

After a few spirited runs up and down, I was just cruising around and my passenger noticed a funny noise. It was a clunking in the drivers front wheel well. It sounded like a bad control arm (just replaced all of them a few months ago), but worse. It was pretty loud. I pulled over about five different times to try to see what it was because it was bugging the hell out of me, but I couldn't see anything wrong. Didn't want to make her wait so I didn't pop the tire to get a better look (I should have, I would have seen it right away).

Wanted to take a look yesterday, but it was raining all day so I had to wait till today after work.

I come out to my car to leave work and notice that my brake rotor is getting scored up. With pretty new rotors and ceramic pads, I knew it shouldn't be doing that so I was suspicious of the brakes now. I get home, pop the tire, and find that one of the bolts that holds the brake caliper to the knuckle is out at least 1.0". It wiggled loose while I was having fun.

Well I tightened up all of the bolts for my brakes (other side was looser than it should have been too) and the clunking is gone. I am glad it was such an easy fix, but its pretty scary to think about what could have happened if the brake caliper broke loose during one of my fast treks up or down the mountain road (thank God for guard rails the whole way up and down). So I am fixed up for now, but I will be taking a harder look at all the components to make sure there is no damage this weekend when I work on a few other things on the car.

Moral of the story: Obey your torque specs boys and girls.....and a little blue locktight probably can't hurt either.

 

Wow... someone is looking after you.