Clicking brake noise

Hi Guys!

I recently acquired a 2015 Leaf SV.

I can hear a rather loud clicking noise from the wheels when I brake in reverse or when accelerating after braking / stopping.

The dealer tells me this is normal on all leafs, and this is due to brake pads shifting.

Did someone else experience this issue?

Here is a video where you can hear the noise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdRy4lvVGPk

The brakes on a Leaf are conventional hydraulic disc brakes. They shouldn't make any unusual noises and I've never heard anything like that on my 2017 Leaf.

Some models have electronic parking brake controls while others use a simple cable activated mechanism. But in general, the brakes are just like any other car.

kebin said:

Hi Guys!

I recently acquired a 2015 Leaf SV.

I can hear a rather loud clicking noise from the wheels when I brake in reverse or when accelerating after braking / stopping.

The dealer tells me this is normal on all leafs, and this is due to brake pads shifting.

Did someone else experience this issue?

Click to expand...

I'm still driving my 2015 LEAF SV, and I don't recall ever hearing that noise. That's pretty hard to miss. Neither do I recall that noise from 3 years drivng a 2012 LEAF. Your dealer is full of **** about it being "normal". It could still be the brake pads, but it should be able to be rectified.

Search the forum; I'm pretty sure there are multiple instances of drive-train clicking problems that have service bulletins or other resolutions.

"That's Normal" is a standard dealership service response to anything they don't want to work on because
a) it's under warranty and the manufacturer will under-pay them for the work
b) it's just a pain in the ass and they can't be bothered
c) they've seen this before and couldn't figure it out

Over the years I've heard "it's normal" several times from dealerships, and in each case I did the troubleshooting and/or research and finally repaired or corrected the DEFECT myself. There's no love lost between me and dealership service techs.

Have you checked the Rotors?

My '13 does this. It's the axle shaft splines. The factory didn't lubricate them, and you can hear the stress click as they torque. Full fix is to remove the axle nuts and grease the splines. Just retorquing the axle nuts will fix it for a while, too. I never bothered with mine, just let it click.

It's remotely possible that your lug nugs aren't tight, but that would be a blatent error with some recent service provider to actively blame. That's an easy check/fix.

Thank you for all the replies and confirming that this is not something normal!

With the correct keywords I was able to find a very similar thread on this forum: https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12121

The dealer is indeed just a waste of time, they kept the car 2 days and didn't bother to check most of the things I brought it for although it should be under guarantee. Had to do the easy fixes myself in the end.

Axle shaft splines stress is an promising thing to investigate. This would explain why sometimes I get a similar noise just by decelerating with regenerative braking.

Do you know whether there would be a way to inject the grease between the bearing and the axle just by removing the nut or would I also need to remove the suspension ball joint and unbind the axle from the bearing?

(Sorry if this is not easy to understand, English is not my native language and I am not really sure I am using the correct mechanical terms)

I tried re-torquing the wheel nuts, but they seem tightly secured.

I got the idea to try to reproduce in neutral on a slope. I get the same behavior.
Wouldn't this rule out axle shaft splines as I don't see how there could be any torque exerted on the axles in neural?

@Baltneu: What would you check on the rotors?

Your English is very good and you explain yourself very well.

Do you have the service bulletin info number for the splines/axles?

Curious, what is your native language?