My wife's legacy GT has 200k miles and the front struts or calipers seem to be making some jingling noise when I go over slight bumps in the road. The struts perform beautifully and the car handles great. The issue seems to lessen slightly when I am braking.

 

The sound is coming from the front end. Struts? Calipers? What? It sounds just like a tambourine, no kidding...

 

Her exhaust heat shields make noise but I don't think they are making this noise.

i've heard front struts making an extended vibrating noise...when you hit a bump and it draws out a little. i only replaced the entire strut though, other than that i can't say what caused it. not sure if that's exactly what you're hearing though, sounds interesting.

 

tied to anything at all - turning, bumps, heat, moving, etc?

I call Brake pads. There's not much else in that area that will make a tinny metallic sound like that.

Well, the more I drive it, the more I'm thinking it's the exhaust shields. It really sounds like very thin metal jingling around. I'll try welding the exhaust shields or remove them and see how that works out. The clamps are bottomed out tight already.

 

I also noticed that it sounds and feels like the exhaust hitting the underside of the car when I first start the engine. Engine mounts? The trans mount is new.

If the mounts were bad the engine would sit down lower which would pull the pipes away from the bottom of the car.

 

If something is hitting the bottom of the car it should be obvious if you crawl under the car (put it on jack stands) and have someone start it.

I'm calling brake pads on this one. If the shims don't get installed properly they jiggle around like a bastard.. My 98 OBW sounds like a tambourine.. I keep meaning to throw new pads in there.

Hmm, could be brake pads, her "brake" light does come on from time to time...

Thats more likely the sensor in the master cylinder getting hung up in the tube it floats in. You can take it out and clean it with brake cleaner and usually it means the brake fluid needs to be flushed and may not have ever been done before.

I call Brake pads. There's not much else in that area that will make a tinny metallic sound like that.

 

You called it!

The pads I took of were worn unevenly and there was no cushion on the back of the pads. The parts store gave me the wrong pads so I had to reinstall one side. I smeared a little hi-temp RTV on the back of the old pads and that made the noise go away on that side.

 

Now I have some ceramic pads in there. It's funny though because this is my first encounter with ceramic pads and they were not hard like I was expecting. The friction material was actually soft. Soft enough that I could scrape quite a bit of it off with my fingernail! I wonder if the heat makes them cure or something. ???

 

The braking seems fine.

 

There is still some jingling sound coming from the front and I'll bet it's the exhaust shrouds. I'll tack weld the seams together and see how that goes.

Uneven wear on the pads means the caliper slides are seized or getting close to it. Did you remove the slide bolts and clean/lubricate them when changing the pads?

I pulled the rubber boots back and wiped the sliders. I didn't lube them though.