Scraping noise from front after AWD swap & MPG's

[turboglenn]

Well, since my AWD swap i've had some things to sort out, one being frozen front caliper pins (which are now free's and lubed) but for some reason at times i hear something on the right hand side it seams dragging or scraping at low speed decelleration. I've already checked the dust shields twice, as stated i've free'd the calipers, and i know the wheel bearings are good because i re-used the existing units in my FWD hubs up front.

Any idea on maybe a caliper bracket bolt difference or anything in the front like that which may cause a slight noise as such from mixing parts/bolts?? (also pads are excellent/new front adn rear)

One other thing, How bad did your gas milage suffer after a FWD To AWD swap? I seem to have dropped about 40 miles off a tank in general, where i used to get 100+ (e85) on the first half a tank i'm now gettting about 85 or less and the second half goes faster as well (part of this may be due to the amount of 1-2 pulls i'm now doing instead of the repeated 3rd gear pulls for the same fealing when i was FWD)

The only other issue i have to report that i know of is my AWD exhaust is hitting the diff making a huge racket at some points but that i can easily fix this weekend after work this week sometime (been working on a friends karmann ghia restoration)

Other than these things i am going with a "so far so good" report on the swap, and loving the pull of the PT6776 in 1st and 2nd (now that i can build full boost in both gears, in FWD i couldn't get 8psi in 1st and maybe 20'ish in 2nd) now i've got 27 in both

 

[Aproductions]

I thought you couldn't use dust shields with the bigger rotors on the AWD?

 

[bastarddsm]

Thats not your exhaust hitting the diff, its deceleration chatter. Its from play in the driveline.

 

[turboglenn]

No, It isn't driveline chatter i've made sure of that, my exhaust hits the diff for sure, (cause i sorta custom hung it since it was a crap AWD system with a crapo muffler that i re-did into true 3" front to back) i can rattle it and make the sound by hand, plus when there's load either by accel or decell there's no chatter (hard to explain) plus when i pull the muffler to one side with rope it stops the noise in the rear. (but i can't have rope on my daily ) I just need to make more hangers but i neded to get back to working on other people's stuff to pay bills

The front dust shields do clear (the rears are almost turned back into dust from rusting though), And although barely clearing the bigger rotors i'm sure that they aren't rubbing (or weren't wehn i installed the calipers after free'ing up the caliper pins) I pried them back enough to be sure of it visually and by rotating the wheel after botling it on.

The sounds do sound like a rotor or something on the front (almost like a slightly warped one, the noise is on-off-on-off repeatedly) I may check the dust shields again just for the hell of it, but it's sounding like something more in the caliper (like possibly the metal brackets that hold the pads in place) But i'm not sure, being it's night time and i can't drive and stand outside to listen to it pass

I did notice my e-brake cables don't pull equally when it's used for parkling so i may have an issue there i ned to look at in the morning. (i've spend all night drilling broken bolts out of a karmann ghia rear hood and welding in new nuts so i can assemble that tomorrow = PITA job)

I may even go out here in a few minutes and see what i can find with a flashlight.

Sometimes i think i even hear one front tire out accelerating the other three but maybe that's in my head i'm not sure

 

[97gst_spyder]

Did you ever figure out what caused the massive mpg drop? Mine is about 10 mpg now. It was high 20's before...