My left front has just started making a scraping noise but stops when I apply the brakes. Isn't that backwards? Any ideas what it may be? I can not see any evidence of scraping on the front side of the disk. It's not like when the rotor gets wet and you have that little period of noise. It's continuous. Anyone had this happen before?

Is your car still under the 3 year/ 36k mile bumper to bumper?

Sounds like the brake pad wear sensor. I just did mine.at 35K One thing I found interesting was that this is the first car I ever owned where the rear pads wear out before the front. I heard the squealing, bought front pads and when I took out the old pads to replace them they weren't worn down to the squealer. They were only about half done. I then looked at the back pads and sure enough they were worn down to the sensor. Go figure.

OK. Never had one do this when I wasn't touching the brakes but I learn new things everyday. I'll get it looked at when I get back from Kauai. I'm past 36000 so no honda help for free. If its something odd I'll pass it along.

It should not be odd problem and warranty will probably not cover this.

It sounds like the wear indicator on your front pads. Basically, there is a little piece of metal that sticks out from the metal pad to a certain predetermined thickness of the brake material. This will begin to touch the disk when the pad material wears to this determined point.

Once you hear the noise, it is an indication to get new pads installed before you ruin your brake system.

I would take that wheel off and take a look for yourself. If we are wrong, then come back here with more questions :)

i occasionally have the same problem. it is deffinitly not the squeak pad on the break. it sounds more like if you were to drag a manhole cover along pavement while pushing down on it with some force, which is very loud, annoying, and embarising if you have passengers. unfortunatly ive brought my '03 coupe into honda and they had no idea nor seemed to want to be bothered with doing anything more complicated than changing the pad/resurfacing the rotor. after a while it stopped but every one in a while it will come back for a few minutes

It could also be rocks caught in between the brake pad and rotor. Happened to me ... I took the wheel off, and cleaned that area, and it went away. But the rock caught in between caused a deep groove in the rotor.

Sounds like a wear sensor to me to. :dunno:

Anyway if you'd like for me to help, I'm local.
(PM sent)

You should get this looked at promptly.

A co-worker had this and he ignored it until the noise "went away", so he thought everything's OK.

The next time he heard noise was the metal brake pads backing plate grinding on the brake rotors!

He (an engineer by trade) felt really, really stupid after I explained to him the why and how those wear indicators work, and that he could have save the cost of the rotors if he had at least asked and found out about the noise from those all important wear indicators.

The brake pad springs (aka hardware) could have shifted and are dragging somewhere on the rotor. If you take the wheel off and look around you might be able to see where it's shiny.

Took the wheel off and their was a small piece of asphalt between the dust cover and the back of the rotor. Thanks to all! :)

Lucky! I hope you paid attention to how much brake material is left to plan for the pad replacement sometime in the future.

Bumping this up for help and suggestions because I'm having a similar issue ...

Last night on the highway, I hit a pretty large bump and immediately after hitting that bump I started hearing a screeching noise very similar to what the original poster described. I heard the noise maybe three times in the next few miles of driving, but it has since gone away entirely. I even drove the car around a bit today to test it out and check for the noise again, but I didn't hear anything.

Right before hitting that bump, I also remember hearing a lot of little rocks clinging around in my wheel wells. I'm wondering if one of those rocks got stuck in the rotor somewhere. Or, I'm wondering if it's related to the brake pads. I've only got 17k miles on the car, but I do drive in a lot of stop'n go traffic on my work commute so I guess it wouldn't be too surprising if I just need new pads.

Anyhow, any speculation what this may be? I'm hoping it's nothing too serious; if it's just simple brake pad replacement then I'll be more than happy. I'm already planning on just taking a day off work tomorrow and going over to Honda first thing in the morning to have them look at it - I'm getting close to needing an oil change and tire rotation anyway so I might just have them do everything at once tomorrow.

Any help would be appreciated!