Thread: Horrible Rubbing / Grinding sound...

Hello Everyone-

Seems we all are noise engineer's when it comes to the Azera huh?
At first I thought, wow am I expecting to much from this car? Well I sure am especially with 24k miles on our 2006 Ultimate which now makes an AWEFUL noise from the rear of the car...

The sound is LOUD at 10-25mph then fades away to zero at 55+ mph. And has a tone of tapping, raspy grinding, and rubbing with the "Whump" of the tire rotation. Meaning the sound has the tire rotation sound of "whummmp-whump-whiiimp" mixed with the other sounds. It changes when the speed of the car changes. What I initially thought was, we had a bad wheel bearing or brake pads. Well I inspected all brakes and they are fine. Brakes stop perfect, yet the sound quites down slightly under breaking...
So with that find of quieting down under slight breaking between 10-20mph. There is something wrong with the left rear braking system. I took a trip in the TRUNK with my wife driving to find the damn problem. Okay I have really narrowed it down now...
The E-Brake is connected to small drum brakes inside the rear disc rotors (which expand and hold the car when you press down the e-brake pedal). Exact same type of setup as my 1998 Volvo S90 (which never has problems).
So I drove the Azera at 15mph (when the noise is at the loudest point) and applied the parking brake lever down fairly hard............... OH MAN...... The sound went away 100%. It's the drum brake pads inside the driver rear disc that's got a problem!!!

So I will take it back to the dealer and have the service writer put what I found. I hate it when you explain the problem to a 'T' and then they write, "customer states there is a noise coming from rear of vehicle." OH MAN... I go nuts, and tell them to write down what I actually said to help the darn techs!

Okay enough ranting & raving, I will keep you all posted on how we fix the issue completly.

*ANYONE else with this issue please post!!*

Haven't heard any mention of this before anywhere! I have accidently left the emergency brake on a time or two and it doesn't cause notable noise, but in short order it feels like some's very very wrong... then I see the light on the dash and go D'OHH!... :P