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Firstly, I wan to say that I am well aware of the problems and potential dangers of working under the car without jack stands and this is not one of those cituations. I was next to the car, at least 30cm away from it. You don’t need to go crazy about this, I know there will be people saying that it is irresponsible and I agree, but lets keep it to the topic.
So I was changing my wheels today with a winter set and kind of screwed up. It is my first time attempting to do work on my car that requires lifting it up. Since I currently do not have that much money to spend I decided to change the tires myself, but as I was trying to pull the rear driver-side wheel, the car fell from the jack on the splash shield of the rotor. I immediately lifted it up again, but this time not forgetting to chock the front wheels. I inspected the issue and the splash shield of the rotor is a bit damaged, but not really bent, the rotor never touched the ground, neither did any other part of the car. I continued working on the other wheels, no problems there and tightened them up to spec with a torque wrench. Then I did a test drive to check if everything was ok and I did hear some really tiny grinding noise coming form the back for the first 1-2km and then it stopped. My question is, should I be worried about it or not?
PS: I drive a BMW e46 from year 2000 and its splash shields are with a 1inch wider diameter than the rotors.
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No chastising you? It’s cruel. :whistle:
Yes, your bent dust shield rubs on rotor. I somehow do not buy “the rotor never touched the ground” as it’s quite an impact and rotor edge is really close to the splash shield one.
Anyhow. Hate to advise to get her back on the jack, remove wheel, and using large screwdriver, pry splash shield back into straight condition.
Otherwise, time will show. I’d re-check on everything in about a week anyway. Get a decent hydraulic jack off craigslist. Or Walmart.Chances are the rotor DID hit the ground, I had the same thing happen on my 98 Regal. It had a warped rotor, pretty bad actually. Chances are you’ll have a similar problem.
I gotta fell for you. Well, it is a big wake up call. I’ve been working on vehicles for 58 years and I still get tense anytime I am raising a vehicle and I do it all of the time.
I tried bending the shield and it just made it worse. Then I tryed again and 50% of the sound is gone, but the other 50% is still there. I will probably just remove the stupid thing so that I can drive the car for now and later when replacing the rotos I will add a new one, they are not that expensive.
My rotors are for replacing anyway, they are really beat up so I don’t really care if it is damaged or not, I will be changing all of them after a couple of weeks.
The thing the everybody calls a dust shield is actually a heat shield so don’t leave it off forever, it is needed.
Yeah, I just checked and the dust shield is actually holding the parking break assembly so I can’t remove it. Bummer! Since I really don’t know what exactly is wrong in there, I will have to buy a floor jack and some jack stands and attempt to repair the damage. However, since the first time I drove it the sound did eventually stop, I hope that it is nothing major… This will be a lesson for me to never forget to chock the wheels when lifting the car. 😀
Heat or dust – it is needed there. Or both, most likely.
You can remove rotor, disconnect P-brake, and remove shield. Then hammer it out. Not that hard. Also, those shields are not expensive to replace. Thing is, you have a very not cheap car to work on plus, it has to be perfect match. Look around junk yards.I already found a brand new shield from Schmiedmann, the are the BMW parts dealer in Europe, and it costs around 12$. I have also decided to buy new pads for the parking break (~15$), since I will already be removing the break caliper and rotor. Unfortunately this job will have to wait untill next year, because I really have no extra cash right now.
I will still try to bend the existing shield, this time with a hammer and something bigger than a screw driver. However this will be done tomorrow, because it’s already late and I don’t want to wake the neightbors. Hopefully this will get the car running for now and after that I will replace these parts on both real wheels.
First of all I’m glad you weren’t hurt. Second….I know nothing about BMW’s except I like the style of them. I went on-line and found this rear brake set up. It appears the shield extends past the rotor for enough like you said the rotor did not contact the ground. I would think just bending the shield back as close as it was before the accident you would be ok. I think the noise you’re hearing while you were driving was the debris that was maybe lodged between the rotor and shield. With that said… before you do what I have written, refer back to the second sentence of this post… picture…
That heat shield isn’t exactly a precision or serious safety part so if it is not perfect, not like the car is gonna fall apart. Bend it best you can and if you cannot get perfect, err on the side of too far away from the rotor.
So it was the back of the car that fell off the jack? I assume it just kind of rolled as opposed to a free fall? In that case, less damage. The back of the car isn’t nearly as heavy as the front.
About the only thing you can do is jack it back up, try to shake the wheel HARD in every direction to see if it is stable. Also then remove the wheel and rotate the rotor slowly and also fast, looking for warpage or cracks on both sides. Listen for bearing noise, should be none.
Also look for evidence of damage to other stuff just to be safe.After that, just kind of keep an eye and ear out for problems. If it’s Ok now, you probably didn’t do any real damage. Unless there is evidence of real damage, I think your nerves are probably wrecked the worst.
Today I went again to try and bend back the shield, this time with a hammer and long, thick socket extention, becuase I was not in the mood for taking off the wheel again. Through the spokes of the rims I hammered it nicely and took the car for a test drive. From what I heard the noise is gone, but it was raining outside so I am really not sure. I will take it for a drive one more time once the rain stops.
Edit 1: I went for another test drive, there was some scraping and I bent the shield a bit more and voila, the obvious scraping sound is long gone. I sprayed a bit of brake-clean all around just to get rid of tiny bits of rust or other particles stuck in there. However, now with the car quiet as a wistle I did manage to hear some barily audible whining noise, but it is so quiet that I can’t figure out where it is coming from. It seems to be coming from the engine bay and it does increase consistently with speed, but it doesn’t sound like a worn bearing, at least I think so. Anyway, I have to figure this next.
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