So I have a judder coming from the front right of my 2009 G37. Figured most likely it would be pads or rotors, so swapped them out this morning with no change. Caliper was not frozen either. Looking at the suspension and steering there is nothing obvious. I also have a small vibration, only on certain roads, at highway speeds. So next thing I'm going to do is swap the front tires to see if problem transfers. Any other ideas?

 

Roadforce balance the wheel/tires. Use a dial caliper mounted to the steering knuckle with an adjustable arm and check the ACTUAL runout of the rotors. Check for worn wheel bearings. Check/correct alignment.

 

Tires have already been balanced and then roadforced balanced after issue didnt go away. They said there were no issues. Alignment has been done already too, and was pretty close to spec before they made adjustments. Wheel bearings show no play. I guess I'll check the runout of the rotor, I have a magnetic base with dial gauge that I think will work.

 

Well rotated the tires and the problem did not transfer. Also, it is only a noise, and is rotational based. Cannot actually feel it in brake pedal or steering wheel.

 

Does it make this sound that's sort of like "whump whump whump" when driving? If so it's probably just your tires, super annoying when it happens. I just threw away a set of Toyo tires on one of my vehicles that started making that sound this spring. Ton of life on the tires too but it was probably delaminating and I didn't feel right selling them to someone so they got cut in half with a port-a-band and went to the tire landfill.

 

Maybe i'll try throwing the spare on tomorrow and see what happens. You would think when it was road force balanced they could have caught it. I'll try and get a video of the sound as well.

 

I doubt they would hear it on the balancing machine, those things are NOISY and in most shops theres a bunch of air tools being run in the area anyways so the chances of the tech hearing anything are slim. Hopefully it's just one tire and not the whole set, since you were pretty specific about it being the RF corner then that sounds promising.

 

Well got the new wheel hub in, installed with no change. At some point, since changing the front rotors/pads and swapping the front tires, the amount of vibration/shake has reduced. Was going to swap the spare on, but with it being a donut, I don't think thats a good idea. Next step I guess is to swap a front tire to the front.

 

Here's my suggestion, every neighborhood has a independent brake/alignment shop...find yours! All they do is suspensions, they'll be able to locate the cause of your vibration easily and it won't cost you dealership $$ to have it fixed!
Gary

 

Already been to two alignment shops, and they say all checks out. They kept pointing fingers to tire shop. I've had the tires balanced 3 times, with the last time being road force.

 

Well the judders are gone, swapped the rear pads and rotors. All looked ok, so not sure what it was exactly.

 

If the rotors passed the runout test then it might have been an odd glazing issue on the pads? I've never actually seen an issue where vibration was the brake pad fault but I suppose it could happen from some kind of "pulsing friction" due to glazing. Usually though hot spots get worn off super fast and any kind of vibration was actually the rotor warping.

 

So here is an update... the brake judder is 100% gone, however the noise associated orginally with it is not. When I hit a speedbump or bump at decent speed I can hear the movement of something. Still sounds like it is from the front right. It is weird to me that the rear brakes caused this noise to initiate, along with the bumps.

 

If it's sort of a "clunking" sound it's probably the front upper control arm bushings, the OEM rubber ones suck and they're known for premature wear. Either swap them out for some urethane or swap out the entire FUCA with an adjustable one so you can have the camber actually adjusted.

The FUCA are super simple to remove on this vehicle, loosen the 3 nuts for the strut in the engine compartment to allow enough room to get the 2 long bolts out on the chassis side, 1 bolt for the ball joint.