Scotty, a mechanic replaced the rear pads/rotors and 1 caliper on my 2012 Mazda 3i Touring (SkyActiv 2.0 liter automatic with 150K miles). The pads made a lot of rattling noise so I took the car back to him and he took everything apart and lubricated it. The noise immediately returned and after haggling with him about replacing the pads with a new set of Akebono's, he wouldn't agree to pay for them so I gave up and just drove the car as is. After a few thousand miles I had the tires rotated and the noise actually went away. However, after another subsequent tire rotation, the noise has now returned and is worse than before. This seems to make no sense but it's true. Is there any explanation as to how rotating the tires is affecting the pad noise? Thank you.
Any explanation? Disc warp from not torquing down the lug nuts properly COULD cause this -lots of folks get carried away with their air wrenches.
get a torque wrench and loosen and re-tighten the lug nuts to the correct ft-lbs in a criss-cross pattern, and see if that works. It might not, but at least that is something that good/bad tire rotation could cause or cure.
