I was doing a tire rotation on a Sienna minivan, and when I was all done and pulling out of the shop to park it, I heard a ticking noise. It’s always a bad feeling when there’s a new sound after you’ve worked on a car. I took it back into the shop and quickly determined which wheel the sound was coming from.

When I looked, I saw that whoever had balanced the tires had stacked weights on the left front wheel. This wasn’t a problem when it was in the back, because the brake caliper is smaller, but in the front there’s little clearance between the caliper and the wheel, which meant this one little weight was just high enough to hit the caliper and cause the ticking noise. It was a simple fix, just removed the old weight and put a new one on next to the others. Glad it wasn’t anything bigger.

-Dan