Wilwood Clunking/Thumping Noise Under Moderate Braking
 

I finally picked up a budget BBK, basic Wilwood front kit, and after patching up every single leak I noticed under moderate to heavy braking there is an fairly audible and repetitive clunking/thumping noise. The noise does not seem to be present when braking heavily over 45mph.

Things I have checked:

• Triple checked torque on all bolts
• Read the Wilwood FAQ and understand these do not have anti rattle springs
• Have plain rotors, not slotted (should be no noise from them)
• There is no pulsing in the brake pedal when this noise is present
• Seems to be louder on the passenger side

Has anyone else experienced this noise? I'm headed to MRLS in 2 weeks and wanted to get a handle on this before I leave.

Sounds like something is loose...There was a thread a week or two back about rotor hats hitting the caliper brackets
https://www.miataturbo.net/suspensio...hen-hot-80370/

Did you take it apart to see if anything has been noticeably hit?

I'll pop a wheel off and take it apart, from what I could tell the first time I looked though there was no contact.

i had that. my wheel bearing was shot.. Track speed confirmed as my rotor was hitting the caliper.


i did the wiggle test after i got off the track.. nothing seemed fine. few days later after it cooled off and did the test again. it went thunk-thunk replaced the wheel bearing and it's all good now. hitting 130mph in the banks @ daytona must of killed it.

My post where I had contact between the rotor and caliper bracket was on the rear. Stock calipers were being used there. That would not be your issue.

In addition to wheel bearings and everything being tight, do you have a nice, even bedding of pad material on the disc?

Interesting, I'll give it a look. Everything was fine with the stock calipers and this noise was not present.

I have not bedded the street pads, still waiting on my DTC-60's to get here.

From what i was reading on mazdaracers (spec miata people) Hubs are fairly common thing to fail. i had no idea i had a bad one. in addition to the thunk noise, at very high speeds i was getting a really odd vibration. My car hits a much higher top speed than normal 4cyl miatas, so most are probably running around with broken hubs and not knowing it..
I bought the timken from autozone. made in japan W/ 3 year warranty.

that's the difference between a fixed and floating caliper.

Check the bearing, it's easy to check. if you catch it early you won't trash a rotor.

Sounds plausible, I ordered two Dorman hubs from Amazon and I'll throw them on. As far as I know I'm still on my original front hubs, might not be a bad time to replace them anyways.

TL : DR I'm a blind idiot. :noob:

After I got off work, I was able to take a look at everything again. As I went through the brakes, I evened out the shims so each side was equal as per the suggestion of ThePass (The driver's side needed less shims than the passenger initially). However, when I had the caliper off, I noticed the piston were not seated evenly.

I realized that when I was originally diagnosing leaks after the install, I had the pads removed and my helper pressed the pedal when I didn't have pads installed. When I re-assembled, I had not noticed I didn't push all the pistons back in evenly.

As a result the pistons were all sticking out at various amounts, once I seated all the pistons in as they should be I buttoned it up and the noise was gone. Super n00b mistake on my part and not paying attention, but lesson learned. I'll throw the Dorman hubs in the track box, hard to beat $45 for two.