and there's a slight ticking sound when the brakes are applied over the last few mph. No ticking if I just coast to a stop, or if I use the emergency brake only. I know, I hate problems that don't throw a code. Using the sniff test to diagnose is a red flag. It doesn't help that I'm also hard of hearing, and don't always wear my hearing aids. I recall it sounding worse at times, the ticks louder, but maybe I just had my aids on that day. Now, it's started pulling, so I need to identify and fix. My first guess was the rear passenger wheel bearing/axle hub, but I don't hear any noise when I jack up and spun the tire - The front passenger spins OK too, but maybe I hear a slight ticking noise - I can't push the brakes to see it if makes the noise from that. Front driver's side quiet and spins easily. So, I'm not thinking wheels, bearings or struts. Maybe a caliper stuck, or something in the rear drum brake broken or frozen/dragging? Any guesses. How to quickly determine whether a caliper is stuck?
Well, that was a new on me. Tire "conicity." I inspected the brakes and the bearings and front end parts and didn't see any problems. Tires all look almost new. But some bulletin I found somewhere in a thread here talked about how tire conicity can make a car pull. The test is to rotate your front tires and see if the steering pull follows the tire you rotated. In my case, the car was pulling right, so I wanted to swap the front tires and see whether the pull went away, didn't change, or followed the rotated tire to now pull to the left. That's what mine did, pulled even harder left than it did right. So, the final step is to take that pulling tire, now on the driver's side, and flip it over on the rim - remount it on the rim inside out from before. Sure enough that fixed it. Thought I was gonna be out bucks for brakes or hubs or struts, something, and it only cost me $20 at the tire shop to flip the tire and re-balance.
