Originally Posted by rvalero

You say you feel like the car's acceleration is being held back, and it makes noise when acceleration and slowing down. Have you checked your front brakes? The pads may not be on right, you may be missing the pad clips (or possibly damaged), or maybe you have a sticky caliper. Pull the bolt on one of your caliper's slide pins, and rotate it so you can do an inspection. With a small C-Clamp, the caliper piston should push back pretty easily. I was able to do it by hand.

Here's what the pad clips should look like:


Remove 1 of the 2 bolts, and the caliper will rotate exposing the pads and pistons.


Here's a pic of the caliper removed completely (you only need to remove 1 bolt for your purposes).


IIRC, the slide pin bolt gets torqued to 25 FT-LBS.

Originally Posted by bufferdan

no front axles... Probably your brakes.... only a wheel bearing or brakes could slow response of the front wheels...

Originally Posted by Endika

At this point why dont you just bring it to your mechanic?

Originally Posted by rvalero

Raise the front end off the ground and spin the wheels. They should spin freely. If they don't, it should be the brakes since you've already had the wheel bearings inspected. Are your rotors discolored, or do they look normal? If it is a sticky caliper, I have no idea how the other shops weren't able to find it. Good luck finding the problem tomorrow.