I have an intermittent problem with my brakes.

When I am braking AND turning to the left, there's a grinding sound and I can feel some chatter in the brake pedal. It "feels" like it's coming from the right front wheel where all the force is when I turn left. I can also hear what I think is an electrical motor sound. It's very weird and I'm sure I'm not describing it well.

This only happens occasionally and when I release the brake it goes away.

My first thought is something related to the ABS system. I've done a "lexmex" :-) and disconnected the right ABS sensor wire. I didn't see a way to disconnect it down by the wheel, so I disconnected it under wheel cowling at 12 o'clock. I will report back if the problem goes away.

Thoughts on what else to check?

These threads describe similar issue:
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/rx-...from-stop.html

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/rx-...er-sensor.html

 

You may want someone else to drive it in say a parking lot and take and look and listen for problems and noise. I have my girlfriend do that with mine and I also check out her 99 Expedition the same exact way.

 

I haven't been able to reproduce the problem since I disconnected the ABS signal. My guess it's the sensor. I'll take it out, clean it up and reinstall it to see if that helps.

 

I've been out of town and haven't had a chance to work on car until now.

I took the brake sensor off on the passenger side and cleaned it. Metal dust flakes from the old rotors were all over the sensor.

Then I went to clean the driver's side and the bolt broke!! Ugh... The problem just had to snowball...

I tried tapping the bolt out but to no avail. The metal wheel guard (plate) keeps the drill from getting a perfect straight angle into the bolt. You can see from the photos that it's off-center.

I've tied up the sensor for now and can drive without ABS.

I could get a torch and try to heat it up and see if the tap will catch with the metal warmed up. Taking off the metal plate will be a real PIA. The caliper and rotor has to come off, then the hub and then the torx screws holding the plate are completely rusted and will probably have to be drilled out themselves.

Any suggestions? I'm kind of resigned to just taking it to the local garage and hoping they have better tools and can get it out w/o causing much damage.

 

Another shot

 

Tied up sensor.

 

I know I'd take a torch to it and I'm sure my Uncle Antonio or any of the mechanics I knew in Mexico would have done the same thing.

 

In the misery loves company department, this exact same thing just happened to me. I had already read your post before I started this job. I was using a 1/4" ratchet to remove the bolt, and used very little pressure on it. I couldn't believe the stupid thing snapped.

In my case it snapped at a point where there was enough threads remaining for me to put the bolt back a little tighter then finger tight. So I put lock-tite on it and put it back for now.

Lexmex how would you remove it after you torched it? Wouldn't you still need to drill+extract?

 

Yes, you'd still need to use a drill, because the heat may or may not do the job. I'd probably be inclined to use a very thin bit to reduce possibly damage to the thread. I had this happen to one of the bolts on one of my calipers a few years ago (finding a replacement bolt was the hard part south of the border), but we did manage to use a thin drill bit, the cut off part of the bolt didn't come off initially, so we used a torch to it for a few seconds then heated up the drill bit with the torch and drilled into the bolt, that did it.

It might just be possible just to heat up the bit for second and then just drill.