My 74 Maverick just started with a very loud clunking from the drivers side wheel/tire area. It was sudden, not something that started low and got loud. I had to drive it home on the side of the road, bearly 2 miles an hour, i only had 3 miles to go, luckily. The clunk sounds like it clunks on the same spot during a full rotation of the tire... clunk.....clunk.....clunk. Faster i went, the faster the clunk. I looked under and didnt see anything wrong and now with darkness setting in i have to wait till tomorrow till i can pull the front wheel. The loud clunking noise stops when you apply the brakes.. Front wheel drum,...... could something have broke in the brakes? Any ideas???
I would bet that when you pull your tire and drum off you will find a brake problem brake shoe maybe rolling around. good luck,
wouldnt something like that, or even the lining coming off the shoe cause the wheel to jamb??? I hope it's something simple like a brake job
rock in the tire?...lol pull your tire and pull the drum, i'm sure you'll find your problem. is there a motion with the noise, like does the car wiggle, or pull or anything or is it just the clunk?
FIXED!! I'm even to embarrassed to say what it was..... but in my defense i did say in my opening thread it was gettin dark and i'll check it tomorrow... Well, first ray of sunlight i popped the hubcap and all the lug nuts were lose.... tightened them up and thats it.... cost for repair.... 0!
Didn't mess up the threads on the lugs? I did that once and it started to loosen up on the freeway. By the time I could exit and pull the tire, the bottom half of the lugs had the threads sheared off from the wobbly rim. Easy fix, not so easy on a freeway off ramp. Luckily Autozone was just a 2 block walk from where I got off.
Ive been driving the car all morning and no problems..... besides the fact that drum brakes suck!!!! but thats for another time
I would recommend that you pop off each lug nut one at at time, inspect the threads, and replace it (won't need to jack it up or anything). Just inspect the threads on the lug. The nuts should be fine unless you torqued them down on damaged lugs. When the rim slides back and forth across the threads it rubs the threads off so the lugs and nuts will be less secure from here on out. Or they may cause the lug nuts to seize up on the lugs next time you try to remove them. If they don't look "stripped" you are fine. If they are, buy 4 or 5 new ones and pop them out with a large hammer or press, and replace them. It is an easy 20 minute job and only costs about $2 per lug.
