My pickup is an enormous pile of rusty metal, but that's ok because it brings me places and I love it to death.

anyway a few weeks ago I started to get a sort of light grinding sound coming from the wheels on the passengers side... almost like two rusty pieces of metal lightly rubbing together in time with the rotation of the wheels.

Even when I stomp on the brakes the noise doesn't change, but on occasion when I hit the brakes or hit a bump in the road it will stop for a few minutes.

it started barely noticeable only if I had the passengers side window down and driving near a wall would I hear it echo back faintly, now I can hear it with the windows up and the radio on.

I had it checked out at a shop and they said they couldn't hear it but they checked out the front brakes and said everything looked fine and I had 1/4 of the brake pads left.

I'm worried it might be a wheel bearing, or worse, and axle. I'm also wondering if it could be the rear drum brakes as a co-worker said sometimes a rusty build up on the inside the drum could produce that noise.

Any ideas?

check your rotors and the inside of the drums. make sure the e-brake is adjusted right so its not rubbing on the drums abnormally. abnormally i mean not too much pressure on the drums.

wheel bearings could be the culprit. does the noise get worse when you turn a certian way?

nope, it's pretty consistent.

I'll see If I can find someone with a jack so I can check out the brakes myself, anything specific I should be checking for?

Sounds very much like my Nissan's issues, which were rear brakes. In the end I simply loosened them up so they didnt work, BUT also didnt drag. I never really noticed a thing in braking......

Lift the rear end and leave the truck in neutral. Spin the rear wheels and see if you feel resistance/rubbing. If so I'd pull the rear tires and drums and have a look. Drum brakes BLOW. I'd be apt to simply loosen the automatic adjuster, spray everything down with brake cleaner incase anything is seized and in case that adjuster works, and slap it back together. If the adjuster doesnt work you simply wont have decent rear brakes which means nothing on a ride with drum brakes. (Less than 15% of your braking. Less under HARD braking due to weight shit. Even less than that if theyre seizing.) If the adjuster does work, hopefully a decent cleaning will solve issues.

You could also spend ~40-70 bucks and replace the shoes and spring kit. Take both wheels off and then take ONE side apart. The other side will be a reference on how to put the random box of springs together to magically make it all work.

I've determined that it's definitely coming from the passengers side rear after I had a friend drive along side to listen.

The real kick to the balls is when I bought the truck about 2 years ago the e-brake and rear brakes were shot and I had to have new shoes and everything to rebuild the rear brakes to pass inspection

I also don't own a jack because the one I did own blew out on me a few months ago (thankfully no one got hurt) and I haven't got around to buying a new one.

Thanks for the tips guys

I'm almost tempted to see if I can find a disc brake conversion kit ... I friggin loath drum brakes.

Anyway thanks for the advice, I'll see if I can check it out this weekend.

is it a chevy? what year/make/model?

I have a similar noise comming from one of my passenger wheels of my grand Cherokee im convinced its a bearing because a friend of mine had the same problem in his grand, but it hasn't gotten loud enough to be noticed over my radio. I also had a similar problem in my wrangler when the balancing weight on my rear driver side drum came off and would be loose in the wheel, but when i took off the wheel for the first time it came right off which im sure you would have noticed. Did you check under the drum and look at the shoes and springs and what not in there?

no it's a 1994 Toyota extended cab/xtra long bed/v6



I honestly haven't had a chance to look at it, I had some stuff that came up over the weekend

I'm a bit embarrassed to say but even when I get around to finding a jack I'm not quite sure where or how to even jack up the back end, it's got big stabilizer bars going from the axle all the way to the center of the frame under the cab since the frame goes up in the back it's a good 30+ inches from the ground.

you can see the (red) stabilizer bars in this pic: http://www.web-nine.com/albums/pickup/toyota2.jpg

even if I took the bar off one side it's till 24 inches or so from the ground to the frame.

The truck is so tall I can easily change the oil/grease the drive shaft/other stuff etc. without jacking and since I didn't have a jack I'd just take it to where I got the tires because they do free rotations (and use a 4 post lift).

you don't wanna jack it up by the frame. chock the front end and put a jack under the rear axle at the left or right side coming from behind it. maybe under a shock mount or at the furthest end of the axle tube. when you get one tire off the ground ( it only needs to be off the ground an inch at the most), you can put an axle stand under there for safety if you want, firmly grip the tire at 12 and 6 o'clock, and try to move it vertically. if there is any movement vertically (kind of pushing and pulling, not up and down) you could assume a wheel bearing is bad (repeat for other side). If you want to check the drive line, again, make sure the front is chocked in front of the tires and in the rear of the front tires. get an axle stand under the left side, and then remove the jack and jack up the right side, and get an axle stand under there. once the rear end is firm on the stands put your transfer case in N to disengaged the rear drive shaft from the t-case and remove the parking brake if its applied. you should be able to spin the rear axle freely with your hands to track down the noise better. Ive had wheel bearings, pinion bearings and complete ring and pinion sets make grinding noises. so there are a lot of thing it could be.

You could also check the u joints while you are dirty. you should have a joint at the front of the drive shaft and at the end towards the pinion. don't have the truck jacked up, just lie directly under the drive shaft and grip it close to the u joint tight with both hands, see if you can move it forward and backwards and look/feel for movement in the joint. You could also listen while you have it "freewheeling" in the air on the jack stands like i said in the previous paragraph.

sorry for the length and if any of it seems a bit confusing.

Like wise, if the place that does your rotations is nice at all they should check all that stuff while its in the air for you, it would be a lot easier.

Sounds like someone needs a bigger jack if their ride is too tall to lift with a conventional jack.....

Thanks for the tips... I never knew I could jack right from the axel

I've checked the drive shaft once before... I actually grease it myself since my compressor came with a grease gun 14 lube fittings that bastard's got

it's actually a 2 part shaft in the rear so it's got a center U joint as well.

I borrowed a jack and got the rear wheel up jacking from under the shock mount on the axle.

The wheel is tight with absolutely ZERO play so the bearings are probably good. Spinning the wheel around I could reproduce the noise and confirm that it's coming from the back half of the drum.

this will be the 3rd issue I've had with the stupid drum brakes since I bought the truck. With that said I'm going to look into buying a disc brake kit... because I just loath drum brakes...

thanks for all your help guys

make sure the emergency brake isnt to tight. there is an adjustment wheel on the back side of the drum in a little hole. a flat head screw driver will get the job done.

Drum brakes suck. If there's an option to get discs, Id do that. At least they make sense.

i knew i forgot something. lol.

good luck with the disc break conversion.

you could try the ol' driving in reverse and pulling up on the ebrake a few times to adjust in the shoe position slightly. but, still good to check of you have pad left. the rivets in the leading end of the pad (if they are not bonded) can do some nasty damage to the drum. also check for the pad for cracks, cracks in a pad can cause a thickness diffrence between the leading and trailing end which could make noise.

After researching disc brakes it's quite a bit more expensive than I anticipated...

I only found 1 company that makes a kit: http://www.allprooffroad.com/index.php?opt...=view&id=33

It looks like it requires some tools that I don't have access to (bearing puller/hydraulic press?) and I'm not even sure if it will work since they claim that the the SEPARATE ebrake conversion kit only works on 4 cylinder models and I have a 6 cylinder model (not exactly sure what the engine has to do with the rear brakes but apparently there is a difference).

... this sucks

have you taken the drum itself off to look at the springs? i was having some rear drum problems a few months back so i bought a drum brake spring rebuild kit for 20 bucks or so( can't remember exactly) but it did the trick, but be careful it is as confusing as shit so remember how you took it aprart or take a few pictures just incase.

My problem was that the tries wouldn't stop equally the right would lock up completly as the left would just start to work. the problem maybe different but that doesn't mean that the solution can't be the same.

I would recommend taking the drum off to inspect the internals. Causes for brake grinding tend to be fairly easy to spot. A typical cause for a drum is excessive shoe liner wear which allows the rivets to touch the drum. Another cause I've seen was the liner actually crubling and falling apart allowing the metal to grind on the drum directly. Most of the liner was found at the bottom of the drum. The latter was likely the fault of a complete failure of the brake shoes. I believe it was a wagner pad. while such a failure could occur with any manufacturer's parts, I tend to stick to OE or quality name brand pads. In some cases, I use performance pads depending on the application.

It wouldn't hurt to replace some of the hardware as Lemon Crevice stated. I would add that you should check to make sure that the cylinders are not sticking either as it is possible that the brake may be engaging moderately with the brake off. This could cause premature wear and/or excess heat allowing the shoe to wear down to the metal or fail.

Ultimately though, you'll need to locate the root of the problem. Drums can be reasonably reliable, but need do tend to have more parts that can fail. Calipers by comparison do tend to be much simpler overall.