Clicking & Creaking Noise when turning, braking, accelerating!!

i think the plastic wheel hub which has been fitted over the actual alloy cracked and some of the grey alloy underneath got heavily scratched.....a part of me is still pretty peed off - more so because I'm confused as to why they have to make it so expensive and difficult to drive in London!

What I may do John, is eventually, when these wheel hubs crack completely - I'll reveal the grey alloys underneath and possibly put a nice coloured vinyl wrap over them in order to re-juvinate their look. I may go with a silver colour. Who knows - so let's see.

I'll do some manual wheel alingnment checking tomorrow, with some string - it should be okay i reckon - this car has been put together pretty well.

I just wanna get to the bottom of this creaking sound.....

I'm still waiting on my torque wrench....as soon as it arrives - I'll be taking the wheel off....just need some formal tests to carry out.


hmmmm

 

WOW - cool!!

Can i make one of these?

I was thinking of a similar product - but wasn't sure how it would fit in and around the moving wheel....but then again - I could test it with the wheel off and a friend could make the turns and press the brake whilst I have my listening equipment connected.

maybe I could even put my fingers/hand on the different parts to feel for a sound/vibration

 

my torque wrench arrived today and I don't have a clue as to how you set it to 76 Ft Lbs

All of the numbers are uneven which I didn't expect!!

How would I set round numbers on this wrench?

On the other side, there is a NM scale aswell

 

I just got back from the mechanic and he reckoned that the CV joint is causing the steering clicking and the brake clicking is coming from the calipers which need cleaning and greasing.

I've watched quite a few videos on YouTube on how to change or even repair a CV joint and so I'm happy to have a go at this. Does any body know where to get a good quality CV joint?

Also - regarding the brake calipers - are there any specific instructions on cleaning brake pads/calipers on a prius?


Thanks

 

I was at the mechanic today and he found an issue with the bush, closest to the body of the car, on the wish bone.

He recommended that I change the whole wish bone but I don't know why he said this when I would have thought just swapping out the bushing would do the trick? Is this a common problem with formerly written off cars?

I'll double check with him tomorrow because the wish bone looked okay to my un-trained eye

He also found that the car's alignment was bad due to the chassis still being bent after a heavy collision which took place before my ownership.

Anyway, I will start with fixing the imminent/visible problem of the bushing/wish bone and then see if the sound goes. If not, then I'll look to a cheap cv joint. There seems to be a lot of instructional videos online for a lot of this work.

1 step at a time I guess

 

yep, well this is it - i spoke to toyota this morning and they said that they only sell the whole arm (for £200!!!) because the bushings alone would cause risk of damaging the wish bone

looks like i need to find one of these at a breaker yard....or find a good second hand/refurbished unit

 

Just a thought - but if the car's body-work is imbalanced, then wont the next bushing just become damaged eventually? Due to mis-aligned driving?

 

well, I'll start with one to start with

here's the one i was going to buy:

TOYOTA PRUIS 1.5 2003-2009 FRONT WISHBONE LOWER ARM BUSH x1 | eBay

thoughts welcome

 

Out of interest - if I fix this bushing issue, will the tyres become better aligned?

Currently due to the chassis still being slightly curved/bent/not fully straightened out, the right tyre is not properly aligned/in line with the opposite tyrethe inner part of the tyre is wearing more quickly

Is this something that can be sorted out with some alignment work?

Cheers

 

Okay - I've just taken some measurements of my wheel distances in order to work out what side tyre wear is taking place on the most and how to potentially fix this.

Note: The collision was on the right side.

Due to the car not having been straightened out correctly - the distance between the back alloy's edge (furthest towards the back) and the front alloy's edge (furthest towards the front) - on the driver side (right side) - is 312 cm

on the left side of the car, it is 313.5cm

So the right side's wheel's distance is 1.5cm shorter than the left side.


I also measured the distance/width between the front two tyres - both at the front edge point and the back edge point of the alloys.

the width between the two tyres at the front side of the front wheels was 171.8 cm - and the width between the back side of the front wheels was 171.1cm. So this means that the front tyres are pointing outwards at the front, by approximately 0.7cm - and therefore need to be adjusted and turned towards each other by approximately 0.4cm.


my questions are:

a) how can i make this adjustment? Is it just a case of turning a nut on the wheel adjustment arm/

b) will this stop the tyre from unevenly being worn out because currently I believe one side of the tyre is slightly more worn than the other side on it. I can't remember fully but I think on the driver/right side front tyre, the outer side of the tyre is slightly more worn out than the inner side of the same tyre.

c) will tyre adjustments/alignment work because the length of the wheel base is uneven between the two sides - or is this a problem that can be resolved without having to actually stretch the right side chassis out more?

Many thanks in advance for any help here