Trying to track down a noise and hoping some of y’all might have some insight. I have a popping noise in the rear that happens when braking. It’s dependent on pedal pressure, too hard or too light and there is no noise. It also seems to be speed dependent. Usually it is when braking from speeds of 40+mph and it starts right at 20mph and ends at 5mph usually. I had a full brake service done three years ago. I am 99.9% sure that the noise was happening before that, and continued to happen after it. I was tracking so many other noises down that this one got pushed to the back burner.

Today, I’ve got the wheels off and the Jeep on stands to do my own inspections. Visually, everything looks pretty good, no evidence of any contact between components of the braking system.

The driver’s side has two possible items of concern. One is the bar under the wheel cylinder, which has some play to it, and the parking brake cable, which is not seated in the backing plate, but otherwise seems to function.







The passenger side has one area of concern, and that is that the same bar under the wheel cylinder has some wire wrapped around it, and I’m not sure if that is normal or something the mechanic rigged when they replaced everything. (Which would make me furious)







The last area of concern is the possibility that it could be coming from the rear differential. When I rotate the axle, I can hear the gears turning quite audibly. It has plenty of fluid and this may just be normal, but I’m attaching a video of that as well just to get some opinions.




Thank you for taking the time to read this and let me know if anything jumps out at you.

 

Pull both drums and make sure everything is where it should be. That cable should be clipped to the backing plate. As it sits, the parking brake lever is probably rattling around in there. Maybe. And that "wire" is actually a spring. Its broken. Take care of those and adjust the brakes. While you in there, check the pads on the backing plates the shoes ride on. I ran into a couple vehicles with grooves in them. Probably because they had no lube left on them so it was metal on metal. The pads can get stuck, and the shoes wear unevenly. Like the knuckles up front, the backing plates can be welded and smoothed.

Also, the anchor plate behind the big white springs is not sitting flat against the shoes. It should be. Because it is not, they are not properly anchored. There is a small step on that post the plate must fit over. The shoes sit against the same part of the post. Remove the springs and reposition the plate. Put the springs back on.

 

I'd suspect suspension parts popping. Track bar, etc.

 

Thanks for the tips. After reading your reply and watching a couple videos, I realize that what I thought was a wire and you corrected me on as a spring is actually completely missing on the drivers side as well. I’m guessing the mechanic didn’t use a new hardware kit when they installed the new drums and shoes. I’m gonna source some parking brake cables because the clips are broken and go ahead and do new shoes and hardware since they are 33k miles old now. Appreciate the help!

 

I realized I wasn’t clear in my original post so I went back to edit it to say the popping was coming from the rear. I will say my rear sway bar bushings are very soft, almost spongy, so I might replace those as well.

 

The rear popping noise I had was caused by weak springs on the spreader bar between the brake shoes that is above the center line. In the parts catalog it is called STRUT, parking brake lever.