Front wheels chatter on any sudden bumps

The pad wore through the plastic in around 500 miles, so it's back to the drawing board.

 

Inspired by El Dobro's posts (I appreciate your efforts), I took a look at my 2012 plug-in's front disc brakes. I was surprised to see two types of metal clips acting as anti-rattle retention springs incorporated around the slots which hold the brake pad tabs. I say surprised because I would have thought the trained Toyota dealership mechanics that tried and failed to solve this annoying sound, would have tried the obvious. In the photo below you can see that I stretched the clips to increase the pressure each exerts against the pads. Seemed like an obvious thing to try and the photos below show the clips before I reinstalled the pads.

Surprise!!! The chatter was reduced about 85%. Completely silent on all but the largest and sharpest bumps. Even if this quick fix doesn't last, I'll have a good idea where to focus future solutions. I find it frustrating that Toyota won't just increase the strength and tension in these clips and solve the problem once and for all.

 

If you can just buy the hardware package for the pads, maybe you can put a spring on both ends of the pads.

Since I still have the plastic tubs, I think what I'm going to try next is to stick a tube or two in the gap on the bottom of the pads, between the ears and the bracket, to see if it cushions the pads hitting the bracket.

 

Did you grease them too?

 

No, I read that the solution of adding thick grease to the ears of the pads didn't stabilize them for long. I used a thin screwdriver to test the movability of the pads in the vertical and horizontal directions and found 2-3mm of space.

As suggested above, adding a matching clip to the bottom of each pad would probably be a permanent solution.

 

How did they manage to screw this up in the design process? The extra clearance that is.
I wonder if there is a way to provide this feedback back to Toyota. I doubt though, as Toyota is a huge bureaucracy.

 

Even the aftermarket pads come with only four of the spring clips for the ends of the pads.

 

I put the little plastic shims under the center of the pads this time and all is quiet. We'll see how long this lasts.

 

This is what I tried last time. The shims wore fairly quickly.

 

That's an Universal stuff. Roads without enough lighting should install these cat eyes. Right side silver white, Red when you drive in wrong side. Any car will hit you head's on.

 

So far, it's been 1100 miles and this method is still working for about 70-75% of the bumps on the road. In about 400 miles, I'll be rotating the tires, so I'll take a look and see if there's any wear.

 

It's been Over 2000 miles since I put the shims in and when I rotated the tires today, I pulled the shims and looked them over. I couldn't find any wear, so I believe this is the way to go to reduce the noise. While I was at it, I took some more of the shim material, rolled it up and pushed it into the center of the exiting material to stiffen it up some more. I'll be testing it on the way to work tomorrow.

 

Is this the solution that works?

 

Even though it was a little nippy this morning, I drove with the windows open down a street the brakes would chatter on and they were nice and quiet. Adding the extra into the center of the material that I used earlier, to increase the resistance, did the trick.