I had my brakes done a couple months ago and they started making an odd noise when applying the brakes at the first couple stops after the car's been sitting. Below is a video where you can hear the noise. Anybody else ever experience this before? It only seems to be happening to one side. I think I'm going to jack it up this weekend and take the wheel off to inspect.
Front and rear were done? Rear brake assembly after the pads have been removed is tricky: there's "spoke" pattern on the caliper piston, and a pin protrusion on the inside brake pad that has to be between the spokes in this pattern. This prevents the piston from rotating when the parking brake is applied. To ensure this happens, the caliper piston may need slight rotation before assembly, and after assembly the brakes should be applied several times to ensure everything is well seated. If the pin rides up on a caliper "spoke", it causes uneven pressure when the brakes are applied, and constant drag. Here's a face-on view of the caliper, and a red dot where the pad's pin should be positioned: A really simple check, without even raising anything, would be to just feel the wheel after a drive, it'll be noticeably warm, more so than (say) a front, if this is happening. Also you can inspect the rotor, again without raising, just looking through the wheel openings with a strong light. Symptoms of misalignment would be a lot of scoring out the outer face of disc, a rusty (unused) zone on about half the inner face of disc (you can just see a little bit of the inside face, at the edge of the dust shield).
I appreciate your help on this. Only the rears were done. I'm thinking you guessed it right. Check on the photos below that I just snapped. I couldn't tell a heat difference (probably because it's cooler today), but I can totally tell an unused zone. Noise culprit: Opposite rear (no noise):
See if you can sneak a peak at the inside face. There's about 1/4" wide bit visible. It'll be most telling. If you can jack it up try turning with E brake off.
